The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said Thursday that across-the-board spending cuts totaling $4.5 billion would "very likely" be used to offset budget shortfalls.
The final fiscal 2000 Labor-HHS appropriations bill now emerging would bump the total outlay number up from the earlier target of $82.6 billion to $83.9 billion, and would leave an approximate $4.5 billion shortfall.
House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said Thursday the cut would affect both defense and non-defense discretionary accounts.
"I think we're committed to keeping it to 1 percent or below," Young said.
House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., said the bill includes $35 billion for education and $2.3 billion for the National Institutes of Health-more, Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., said Thursday, than President Clinton requested. There also is level funding for Goals 2000 state grants and $1.1 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, along with another $300 million in emergency budget authority. Also included, Porter said, is $1.2 billion for Clinton's initiative to hire 100,000 teachers, but with language allowing school districts to spend the money on teacher training or other programs in the education block grant.
Democrats and Republicans continued Thursday to trade barbs over which side is spending the Social Security surplus, and whose rhetoric is worse.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., again hit the House GOP leadership for bringing the Commerce-Justice-State spending bill to the floor Wednesday after they thought GOP leaders agreed Tuesday to work with the president on the remaining bills in the context of the big picture.
But if Republicans insist on sending bills to the White House one at a time, Daschle said Clinton will just veto them and congressional Democrats will sustain those vetoes.
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