Angry House Republican leaders are drawing a line in the sand in their struggle with the Senate over the fiscal 1999 disaster-defense supplemental, as are frustrated fiscal conservatives.
According to GOP sources, the leadership will pull out the agricultural aid section of the package and pass it as a separate bill if the conference committee does not finish its work tonight.
Said one GOP leadership source, "What the Senate doesn't understand is that we cannot pass what they want in the House," because of widespread opposition to the riders and spending levels Senate conferees are pushing.
Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, a leading GOP moderate, said he is preparing a motion to instruct conferees, which he will offer Thursday if the conference stalls today, to "take these pork barrel projects out. Enough is enough." Upton added that "a good number [of GOP moderates] will vote against it if the Senate insists on staying at the trough."
Moderates and conservatives teamed up earlier this year to hold the line on spending in the disaster supplemental, and succeeded in getting all but $195 million of the $1 billion disaster bill offset.
An aide to the Conservative Action Team said fiscal conservatives are equally troubled and are withholding their support for the supplemental until they see the final conference report.
Conservative Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., who unsuccessfully offered an amendment to offset the entire disaster supplemental in committee and on the floor, called the conference a big "feeding trough."
House Majority Whip DeLay indicated if the bill is not reined in, he will vote against it. Emerging from a leadership meeting this afternoon, DeLay said, "We are holding down the spending and we are resisting everything the Senate is doing."
House conferees and leaders are fighting the Senate-backed legislative riders, such as emergency loan guarantee programs for the steel and oil and natural gas industries, protecting the state's tobacco settlement funds, emergency funding for school violence prevention programs and language to block FY99 spending on pending environmental regulations.
But an optimistic House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said, "I think we'll wrap up today. Period. Exclamation point." Meanwhile, the conference committee deadlock has forced the Senate Appropriations Committee to put off action on 302(b) spending allocations among its subcommittees, according to a panel spokeswoman.
In a related development, the White House appears not to be pleased with a letter sent Tuesday by Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to Young and Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, asking the supplemental spending request be scaled back.
"The letter that they sent says that it's okay to go ahead and put in as much as you want, as long as there's no cost in it, so that if you've got some political agenda, it's okay to tack it onto this bill,' " charged White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart.
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