Appropriators Fight Back

Note to readers: This is the second of a three-part series examining the House appropriations process from the perspective of several key players.

While conservative Republicans are accusing GOP appropriators of abandoning principles in order to get bills passed with Democratic support, unrepentant appropriators say they will continue to work with Democrats because conservatives cannot be counted on to deliver votes even after they get most of what they want.

In an interview, House Appropriations Chairman Robert Livingston, R-La., bristled at talk that he has abandoned conservative principles just to get a deal. "Just check my record," he said. "I'm as conservative as any of them. My conservatism goes back 20 years."

Republicans alone cannot pass funding measures "unless there is a pledge by Republicans not to vote in the patterns they've been voting in," House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., added in a separate interview. "How do you do it? If there's a way, I'd like to know about it."

Livingston agreed, saying with the narrow GOP majority and internal divisions, he must rely on Democrats on several key appropriations bills. "It's just life," he said, adding conservatives "may not like it, but that's the way it is."

House Appropriations aides point to the fiscal 1998 Labor-HHS funding bill as a prime example.

For weeks, conservatives fought an administration plan to allow national education testing. At one point, conservatives convinced House GOP leaders to reject a compromise worked out by appropriators and, eventually, they convinced the Clinton administration to accept a plan that stalls implementation of testing. Nonetheless, 60 House Republicans--most of them conservatives--still voted against the Labor-HHS conference report.

"People always want to push the limit and get as much as they can," Livingston said. "We had to settle for 60 or 70 percent of what we wanted." That should be sufficient for one year, the chairman said, suggesting that members who demand a 100 percent victory "are operating under term limits and want to achieve whatever they want before they leave." He later added: "We're winning and we ought to stop complaining about losing crumbs off the table. If I don't get something this year, I'll get it next year."

A key House Republican Appropriations Committee aide said GOP members should have learned not to allow funding measures to become laden with ideological legislative riders after seeing the disaster relief bill bogged down for weeks earlier this year. "You would have thought that exercise would have been instructive," the aide said. "It wasn't."

The aide added, "We have a numerical majority, but we do not necessarily have a working majority." The House Appropriations aide said Republicans must decide where to draw a line in the sand. "I think we have to pick our issues better," he said. "We have to pick issues that can win."

Porter, meanwhile, said he is concerned about his bill having become the focus of a lengthy battle among Republicans. "One of the messages I got out of all this is that we have to communicate much earlier in the process," he said, adding that he plans to meet with conservatives and others throughout the process next year. Porter said the appropriations process must be "highly participatory" and, ultimately, the bills must reflect the current values of the American people.

"It's very difficult to say you're going to shape it without the minority," he said. "Those who have served in the minority possibly understand that better than those who never did."

Porter said Republican appropriators have "changed the mentality of government" and have forced federal agencies to be much more result-oriented.

Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., sees another problem--the refusal of authorizing committees to pass legislation reauthorizing their programs. Rogers, whose bill bogged down this year, said he would have had no problems if authorizers had done their work. If that had happened, conservatives could have focused on those bills as vehicles to change programs. "People like that would have a place to vent their frustrations," he added.

Friday: The Democratic minority assesses the process.