House, Senate ready to finish remaining spending measures

If the first session of the 107th Congress is not one for the history books by the end of the day, it will not be because of appropriators.

The House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve the fiscal 2002 Labor-HHS and Foreign Operations conference reports and House leaders planned to put the final spending bill of the year, Defense, on the House floor first thing this morning.

With that, the House will have wrapped up the fiscal 2002 appropriations cycle--even if it is more than two months late-- and the Senate is on track to do the same later this afternoon.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the Labor-HHS conference report today at 11 a.m. After the vote, the Senate will debate the Foreign Operations conference report for an hour and plans to adopt it by voice vote.

Then the Senate will turn to the $317 billion Defense conference report, which also contains the $20 billion anti- terrorism supplemental, with adoption likely at some point in the afternoon, depending on how long senators want to debate it.

House action on the Defense package is expected to occur by early afternoon, and as early as noon. The conference report was expected to be filed overnight Wednesday.

Included in the Defense bill is $7.8 billion for missile defense, $881 million for anti-terrorism, $18.4 billion for health care. It also includes language providing for the Pentagon to lease 100 Boeing 767s to use as air-refueling tankers and four Boeing 737s for air transport missions for the Defense Secretary and other top officials--potentially including congressional leaders. Both leases would run for up to 10 years.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the 10-year cost of the 767 lease at roughly $20 billion, minus the residual value of the planes; no figures were available for the 737 lease, which was only added to the package in the last day.

The supplemental title, which represents the second installment of the $40 billion emergency package Congress passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, provides $3.5 billion for defense-- far less than the White House request of $7.3 billion--as well as $8.2 billion for New York and other areas hit by the terrorists, and $8.3 billion for homeland security.

In addition to making good on their pledge to avoid wrapping multiple bills into a year-end omnibus and instead pass each of the 13 annual spending bills individually, appropriators also largely succeeded in keeping unrelated legislation off the spending bills.

As of Wednesday night, appropriations sources said several Medicare- related items that House leaders want passed would not be sandwiched into the Defense conference report.

Wednesday, the House approved the normally contentious Labor- HHS bill, voting to send the $123 billion measure to the Senate, 393-30.

"This bill is a good example of what a big difference a few years can make," said subcommittee and full committee ranking member David Obey, D-Wis.

Obey in previous years accused Republicans of setting unrealistically low spending allocations for the bill-- allocations that were routinely ignored in the final measure.

About the only unhappiness expressed was by Democrats disappointed that House conferees voted Tuesday to drop a Senate- passed mental health "parity" provision that would have required insurance plans that cover mental health services to cover them to the same extent as all other services.

But Education and the Workforce Chairman John Boehner, R-Ohio, whose committee is one of three that can claim jurisdiction over the matter, vowed to take up the issue before his panel next year.

Debate on the $15 billion Foreign Operations bill was similarly anti-climactic. "This is not just about foreign aid," said Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R- Calif. "It is the voice for freedom in the world."

As on the Labor-HHS bill, Democrats expressed concerns about Senate language dropped from the bill--this time a provision that would have rescinded the "Mexico City" policy that bars U.S. aid to international family planning organizations that use non-U.S. funds to perform or promote abortion. But if retained, the language would have guaranteed a presidential veto.