GOP leaders to senators: Vote for budget bill or lose pork

Senate Republican leaders may be about to begin applying pressure on GOP moderates in the old-fashioned way to support the fiscal 2005 budget resolution: Vote "aye" or risk losing earmarked projects in their states.

Several sources confirmed Thursday that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., has discussed with appropriators -- Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M, in particular -- the prospect of dangling home-state funds in front of moderate holdouts.

Nickles would not comment, except to say, "We're working on a lot of options to get this wrapped up."

Domenici, who also chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is a natural ally for Nickles as a former longtime Budget Committee chairman and an Appropriations subcommittee "cardinal," who cannot begin writing an Energy and Water spending bill without a budget resolution. A Domenici spokesman could not comment.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, earlier this week informed subcommittee chairmen that they should take an active role in garnering votes for the budget resolution, or face an unruly process on the floor with little spending restraint.

GOP leaders are focusing their efforts on Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., and Maine's two Republicans, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. All have resisted supporting the budget blueprint because it would exempt $27.5 billion in tax cuts from pay/go offset requirements.

A meeting between the three holdouts, Nickles and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Thursday failed to bear fruit.

One person familiar with the discussion said the line of argument by Nickles and Frist had moved away from trying to sell the moderates on plans ranging from a separate Senate rules change to reinstate pay/go rules to removing reconciliation altogether and considering tax cut bills as part of a larger tax package.

Now, the source said, leaders are simply "putting the pressure on."

Since the 1974 law establishing the congressional budget process, Congress has never failed to adopt a budget resolution when one party controls both chambers and the White House.

Nickles, who is retiring, could be seen lobbying holdouts furiously throughout the day, including John McCain, R-Ariz., who has said repeatedly he would not support any budget resolution that imposed pay/go rules for less than three years. McCain said he was not even invited to the earlier meeting with the other three GOP holdouts.

Also, some GOP conservatives are putting pressure on Nickles not to "bend over" -- as Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., put it -- on tax cut principles to please moderate holdouts. "It's holding up the whole thing, and I'm saying I'm getting tired of that and if we compromise and keep compromising, then they lose me," said Burns, adding that he had informed Nickles of his position.

Burns is in the same position as Domenici, in that as chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee he also faces a difficult task in writing the Interior spending bill without a budget plan.

"It's looking sickly," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. "I don't see it right now. I think they should go right to an omnibus appropriations bill" and give up on the budget, he added.

But Nickles and GOP leaders are not yet giving up. "We're in the hunt until the last dog dies," said Eric Ueland, deputy chief of staff to Frist. He declined to discuss options for attracting votes, through appropriations or other means.

Rhode Island is not represented on the Senate Appropriations Committee, although Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., sits on the House panel. But Maine has no seat on either Appropriations committee.

Spokesmen for Chafee and Collins said they had not yet been approached about possible earmarks for their states, and a Snowe spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.

But a particularly sensitive pressure point on the Maine delegation could be Army Corps of Engineers projects that would be funded through the Energy and Water spending bill.

For example, Snowe and Collins have asked the Environment and Public Works Committee to authorize $20 million as part of the Water Resources Development Act for the Army Corps beach restoration effort at Camp Ellis Beach in Saco, Maine, for which the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee would have to provide funds.

They wrote an April letter to Environment and Public Works Committee leaders that a jetty built 100 years ago by the Army Corps "has altered the pattern of currents and sand deposition and is the primary cause of the devastating erosion of Camp Ellis," leading to 36 houses being washed out to sea over the past century.

While the project is expected to receive only a fraction of the total $20 million in the fiscal 2005 spending bill, Domenici could nonetheless be highly influential -- his panel is expected to receive an allocation only about $700 million higher than last year's enacted total of $27.3 billion, with intense competition for popular water projects.

John Stanton contributed to this report.