GOP may share Defense funding with other agencies

As members of Congress return from the Memorial Day recess, House GOP leadership staffers are coalescing around a strategy of reworking the spending levels assigned to the various House Appropriations subcommittees.

GOP aides said Monday that leaders want to adjust all of the 302(b) subcommittee funding allocations to "take some of the pressure off" the spending measures slated for the deepest cuts, primarily the Labor-HHS, VA-HUD and Commerce-Justice-State bills.

GOP leaders met Monday to discuss appropriations strategy, and were scheduled to meet with the GOP Conference Tuesday morning.

A spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said that at the meeting, the speaker is "going to have a straight talk with the members" about supporting the leadership's appropriations strategy. That strategy is keyed to staying within the statutory budget caps for fiscal 2000, which requires Congress to keep total discretionary spending to $536 billion-well below the FY99 spending level.

GOP aides said the House 302(b) allocations for FY2000 would move in the direction of the Senate, where cuts are more evenly distributed among the subcommittees, and where Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is looking for additional revenue sources and moving money from the Defense subcommittee to beef up spending for the domestic accounts.

Already, Stevens has added $2.6 billion to the FY2000 pot by accelerating planned sales of broadcast spectrum licenses, and has set aside another $3.1 billion in defense savings to be distributed later.

But one House GOP aide cautioned there are "major questions" about whether that approach would work in the House, where a large contingent of defense hawks already thinks the amounts allocated for defense spending are too low. The aide predicted leaders would have a tough sell convincing proponents of higher defense spending to give up any of the Defense subcommittee's allocation.

A Democratic source made it clear Republican leaders should not expect to pick up much Democratic support. If Republicans opt for only minor adjustments, the aide said it might help them pass a few appropriations bills, but would not win them many Democratic votes.

"The problem with the 302(b)s is more than just a couple billion here, a few billion there," the aide said.

GOP leaders must also make their case to their own skeptical and divided conference. Conservative Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said the leadership has several hurdles to clear: whether disgruntled conservatives-and not simply a majority of the conference-will accept their 302(b) strategy, and then assuring conservatives that if they go along with the strategy, moderates will, too, and not instead work with Democrats to pass appropriations bills that would exceed the budget cap.

"The key is, will it please the ones who weren't pleased before?" said Souder of the conservatives, himself included, who stalled action on the FY2000 Agriculture bill before the recess because the spending total was higher than current year spending.