House panel boosts Interior spending $700M above Bush request

Without a murmur of dissent, the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee approved a fiscal 2003 spending bill Tuesday that calls for $700 million more than the White House wanted.

In sending the $19.7 billion measure to the full committee, the panel ponied up $2.2 billion to fight wildfires, even as some legislators pondered the possibility of an emergency bill later this summer to help pay for quelling fires raging this season in the West.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said after the meeting that the Interior appropriations bill would not reach the floor until mid-July, where it is likely to face some amendment attempts by lawmakers who do not think it provides enough for national parks and conservation programs. No amendments were offered at the markup session, as the 13-member subcommittee voice-voted its approval of the legislation.

Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., praised the measure as "a very decent job with very short revenues on a bill that really does our constituents a lot of good." He said some of the "accounts in this bill will need more money, such as for firefighting," but said any additional funding proposals would have to await the full committee's markup or even the debate on the House floor.

After that, the bill will go to a House-Senate conference, where most of the arguments probably will center on so-called "earmarks," or special projects targeted for lawmakers' home states and districts.

"As you know," said Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee and a former chairman of the Interior subcommittee, "I'm not against earmarks. But I've let it be known [to key senators] that what they get, we get. It has to be 50-50 or there's no deal."

Regula and others also warned the Office of Management and Budget, which opposes most of the funding increases, that Congress would stand its ground on this bill. "It's understandable that the OMB wants the cutbacks," Regula said. "That's their job. But it's our job to serve our constituents. We're the ones who get elected ... and we know what the needs are back home. So we're going to make those decisions, not OMB."

Highlights of the spending decisions in the bill include:

• $1.6 billion for national park operations, plus another $368 million for maintenance.
• $458 million for National Wildlife Refuges.
• $933 million for Bureau of Land Management programs.
• $928 million for the U.S. Geological Survey (including $55 million that the administration wanted to cut).
• $5.2 billion for Bureau of Indian Affairs operations, education and health programs.
• $377 million for federal land acquisition, mainly from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
• $154 million in grants to states to be used to facilitate land acquisition for parks and recreation areas.
• $96 million for startup costs related to the multibillion-dollar Everglades restoration project.
• $300 million in grants for low-income people to help heat and cool their homes. This is a $25 million increase over fiscal 2002.
• $116 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and $126 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the same amounts allotted for this fiscal year.

In adding $222 million for Native American programs, the subcommittee provided for the construction of six new schools and several hospital and health clinic projects.