Senate, House must resolve differences on supplemental spending

The Senate just after midnight Friday passed the long-delayed fiscal 2002 supplemental spending package on a 71-22 vote, clearing the way for what could be a difficult House-Senate conference.

Despite complaints from Republicans and a veto threat from the White House saying that the Senate bill is too expensive, the chamber rejected all attempts by some Republicans to cut the bill's price tag. In fact, the bill's spending number actually increased on the floor, after the Senate approved on a 79-14 vote an amendment by Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to boost global HIV/AIDS funding by $200 million.

While some lawmakers hope that a conference committee can complete its work next week, that might not be so easy, given the differences between the House and Senate bills.

The Senate bill is almost $3 billion higher than the House bill, with most of that money going toward homeland security accounts--a move that the White House opposes. Meanwhile, the House bill includes an extra $1.8 billion in contingency funds for defense needs that are not included in the Senate legislation.

In addition, the Senate bill contains controversial "all or nothing" language that would force the administration to accept the entire amount of non-defense emergency spending in the bill or receive none of the funds at all. And language added to the Senate bill to force the White House to release about $34 million to the United Nations Population Fund, which is currently under review by the administration for possibly participating in coerced abortions, will likely cause uproar among GOP conservatives.

It also remains unclear whether lawmakers still might try to add an fiscal 2003 spending target or a debt limit increase to the supplemental in conference.