House panel OKs $100B spending bill; veto certain

On a long march to certain deadlock, the House Appropriations Committee approved a $101 billion catch-all bill on Wednesday to pay for federal housing, veterans and environmental programs. President Clinton already has flagged the bill as veto bait.

The legislative potpourri, which covers more than 20 federal agencies, served as a political platform for Democrats, who branded it as a penny-pinching vehicle to "save" money for a big Republican tax cut. Republicans insisted they were bound by the constraints in an earlier budget resolution to slash spending for emergency relief and several major programs for the poor.

After the day-long markup session, Appropriations Committee chairman C.W. "Bill" Young, R-Fla., candidly acknowledged that the massive bill, as now written, would spark a White House veto. But he also insisted that eyeball-to-eyeball negotiations with the president over spending levels in the bill eventually will reconcile the two parties' conflicting views, probably in late September as the new fiscal year 2001 approaches.

"My job is to get these (appropriations) bills out of committee and through the House as swiftly as I can, then get them to the President who can sign them or not," Young said. "If he doesn't, then we sit down with him and get to work on resolving our differences, out of earshot of all the political rhetoric that now surrounds the matter."

Indeed, as committee Democrats tried in vain to boost spending for several programs in the bill, even some Republicans acknowledged that spending cuts in some cases--for space, housing, veterans health care and other programs--almost certainly will be boosted when the principals meet to hash out their differences later in the year.

As the committee plowed through a thicket of Democratic amendments, intended chiefly to contrast the policy disputes between the two parties in an election year, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., hammered repeatedly on his party's theme that ruling congressional Republicans were sacrificing aid to the needy for an array of tax cuts that he said would mostly benefit the richest Americans.

"At a time when the economy is humming and we're running huge surpluses," Obey fumed, "they want to pass, piece by piece, a bunch of tax bills that will cost over $650 billion in lost revenue while our veterans, the poor and our science and technology programs starve for funding." He said a GOP proposal to phase out the federal estate tax would provide some $10 billion in tax relief for the "richest one-tenth of 1 percent of taxpayers," and that the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers would reap the greatest benefits from the cuts.

Committee Republicans shot back that their bill "contains not a single tax cut" but merely represents a balancing of priorities among a plethora of federal programs that have grown willy-nilly over the decades. They said these initiatives had to be reined in for the sake of individual enterprise and the nation's economic well-being.

Besides cutting back the money for a number of programs for the rural and urban poor, the GOP-controlled panel eliminated entirely the president's Americorps program that engages college-age and college-bound students in local efforts to help the poor develop their own capacity to become self-sufficient--in much the same way that the Peace Corps operates in foreign countries. That decision will surely be reversed, however, once the top GOP appropriators sit down with the president's aides to reconcile their differences.

As Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y., chairman of the VA-HUD appropriations subcommittee, put it: "Yeah, it'll be put back in. But we will have made our point."

In fact, point-making seemed to be the order of the day as the committee unraveled a skein of amendments that seemed calculated to draw political blood during the markup. Democrats lost almost all of those battles but seemed confident they would eventually win the war when the president weighs in this fall.

Whether Clinton can win back all of his proposed spending levels, however, is problematic. Overall, Republicans chopped about $8 billion from his initiatives. A number of those cuts are bound to stick.

In action on Wednesday, the committee:

• Defeated an amendment by Obey to add back $508 million for the National Science Foundation, restoring funding levels to the amount the president requested.
• Narrowly rejected a bid by Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., to restore some $323 million for NASA.
• Turned down an amendment by Rep. Alan Boyd, D-Fla., to restore $2.6 billion in money eliminated by Walsh's subcommittee for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Walsh argued that about $1.7 billion remains in FEMA's account to pay for disaster claims and reminded the committee that his bill provided another $300 million for fiscal 2001. He also said that Congress normally passes supplemental appropriations bills to cover unforeseen disasters, but Democrats said GOP leaders often insist on slashing other programs to cover the cost of such emergencies. They noted that the GOP-controlled Senate now is sitting on a supplemental bill that contains some funding relief for economically distressed farmers and past disasters.
• Defeated another Obey amendment, by a vote of 27-20, that would have increased housing subsidies for the elderly, disabled and homeless and for people with AIDS. Altogether, the four programs would have received an additional $107 million next year under the amendment.
• Beat back another Mollohan amendment that would have boosted spending by $1.8 billion for a variety of public housing assistance programs, as well as home-buying programs for the poor. That amendment also contained $37 million for a joint initiative by Clinton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to create a new America's Private Investment Companies program to help poor urban and rural communities, mainly through tax breaks and other incentives, attract businesses and neighborhood renovation investments.
• Rejected an amendment by Reps. David Price, D-N.C., and Joseph Knollenberg, R-Mich., to boost spending for medical and prosthetic research in Veterans Administration hospitals by $23 million in fiscal 2001. That sum would have been offset by cutting all funds for the Selective Service System, which has remained in existence despite the termination of the military draft in 1973. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., argued that the SSS might be needed again in case the United States got involved in a "real no-kiddin' war" and had to reinstate conscription.
• Defeated a proposal by Mollohan, 31-19, to clarify language in the committee's VA-HUD report that appeared to make it impossible for the United States to continue to study, conduct research and discuss ways to work with other countries to curb the greenhouse gases that most scientists say are contributing to global warming. Walsh and Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., argued that the language was meant not to halt study of global warming but to ensure that the President did not try to move too fast in forging an international agreement on abating air pollution--under the Kyoto Protocol--without Congress' permission.
• Rejected a bid by Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Fla., to shift $2 million from one program to another in enforcement efforts for the federal "fair housing" program.
• Defeated an amendment by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., by a 30-20 margin, that would have enabled the Environmental Protection Agency to use the latest technology to speed cleanup of riverbeds contaminated by hazardous substances. Walsh argued that EPA must await a National Academy of Sciences study, due later this year, to determine the safest way to disturb riverbeds before proceeding with dredging or other technology in cleanup projects.
• Rejected a Mollohan amendment, 30-21, that would have preserved several hundred "community builder" jobs at HUD. The agency has been under orders from Congress for a year to reform a program that some members believe has become a haven for political activists in communities around the country. But Democrats insisted that innocent civil servants are facing possible job losses.

• Rep. James Moran, D-Va., to require EPA to make sure that landfill operators don't get stuck with unwarranted costs of closing and sealing landfills long after the closures.
• Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., to urge EPA to work closely with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service to devise a plan for lessening environmental degradation caused by illegal immigrants sneaking into the Southwestern United States.
• Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., requiring NASA to conduct a joint study with the National Research Council and National Academy of Public Administration to review, focus and strengthen research programs conducted by the troubled space agency.
• Rep. Bud Cramer Jr., R-Ala., and Knollenberg, to urge EPA not to enforce new nitrogen oxide standards until federal courts decide a pending challenge to the environmental agency's rules.
• Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, to provide $1 million for the Community Development Revolving Loan Fund to provide training for credit union workers in communities that lack credit opportunities for low-income people.
• Walsh, to raise the ceiling to $3 billion from $600 million for borrowing by federally insured credit unions to cover short-term liquidity gaps.