Republicans bicker over Treasury-Postal defeat

Despite daily bicameral meetings, House and Senate leaders were at odds Thursday over appropriations strategy in the wake of Wednesday's overwhelming Senate defeat, 68-29, of the fiscal year 2001 Treasury-Postal/Legislative Branch spending conference report-a measure that barely passed the House last week on a 212-209 vote.

House GOP sources were frustrated, in particular because many conservative and vulnerable freshman members were pressed to vote for the package-despite their misgivings that it would not block the annual congressional cost-of-living increase-on the expectation it would pass the Senate.

Some GOP leadership aides even floated the idea that the House could consider a freestanding Treasury-Postal spending bill to give those members a chance to take a symbolic vote against the COLA-but Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., later dismissed the idea, saying, "We're going to get a cost-of-living increase like everybody this year. Period."

Lott added that he is in no rush to try to pass that conference report again, noting it likely will get thrown into the year-end omnibus talks with the White House. Lott said the bill failed Wednesday due to a combination of factors in both parties: the White House's and Democrats' insistence on more money for IRS reforms and counterterrorism, opposition to including the telephone excise tax repeal, general anger over being shut out of the process, Republicans' opposition to the already increased total spending level of the package and the perception that a vote for it is tantamount to a vote for a pay raise.

Across the Capitol, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., expressed his frustration with the Senate's slow pace in passing spending bills, as well as with the policy fights that are stalling completion of several appropriations conference reports.

Young told reporters that a host of policy issues "that should have been handled by the authorizing committees," rather than differences over funding, were the main problem. But he added: "I'm going to proceed as expeditiously as possible to try to find a way to get this done. [But] it's difficult to know where you stand with the other body when they haven't passed their bills."

Despite voting on the Treasury-Postal/Legislative Branch conference report, the Senate never considered Treasury-Postal as a free-standing bill, nor will the Senate debate the fiscal year 2001 VA- HUD, Commerce-Justice-State and District of Columbia spending bills reported out of the Appropriations Committee.

Young said he expected conferees to finish their work on the Interior bill Thursday, while he said a planned meeting Thursday to wrap up the Energy and Water conference had been postponed, adding that he was "not sure who made that decision." He also said conferees were "basically ready" to go on the Transportation and VA-HUD spending bills. But House leaders do not want to let Transportation move as a separate conference report, preferring instead to use it to carry a more problematic appropriations measure, most likely the VA-HUD spending bill.