Senate Dems move to win GOP support for more spending

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., appear to be setting up a game of political chicken with Republicans over the $7.5 billion homeland security spending package they now plan to attach to the fiscal 2002 Defense appropriations bill.

The senators' move could force Republicans to swallow more emergency spending than President Bush has said he will accept, or raise points of order that could bring down the entire Defense spending bill.

Byrd announced Wednesday he would add the extra $7.5 billion to the Defense bill, which is already carrying a $20 billion anti-terrorism supplemental, at the markup next week.

Speaking to reporters today, Daschle indicated he and Byrd might try to make it more difficult for Republicans to challenge the add-on, saying, "There is a possibility of simply supplanting part of the Defense appropriations bill with homeland security and moving that supplanted part outside the defense bill. And that's one way to address it, if you catch my drift. ... You call it an emergency."

By using the emergency designation on defense, Democrats appear to be betting that Republicans will not want to raise a point of order against spending in excess of the $686 billion for the regular appropriations bills and $40 billion supplemental, because it is money directly tied to war on terrorism.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who is both a member of the Appropriations Committee and ranking member of the Budget Committee, later commented that such a strategy would seem logical. Yet Bush has continued to threaten a veto against any spending bill that exceeds those limits, and congressional Republicans have fallen in line behind him.

Daschle addressed that issue directly today, telling reporters those limits were set before the anthrax attacks, the economic downturn, and the recent rise in unemployment. "So while we agreed to a budget framework before … all these circumstances have occurred," Daschle said, "the situation is different."

But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says he does not buy that argument. McCain said today he opposes Byrd's extra homeland security spending proposal, and deriding most of it as pork said he "would do anything I can, including raising points of order," to stop it from being added to the supplemental.

McCain was unfazed by the prospect of putting the entire Defense spending bill at risk, saying, "I guarantee you we'll have a defense bill."

Appropriations ranking member Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who is also the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, offered a more circumspect reaction to Byrd's proposal. Stevens said that while he also believes "there are a great many needs out there," he is analyzing Byrd's proposal "to try to find a way to address the needs….and at the same time stay within the parameters the president has set."