House plots cuts, Senate eyes accounting in Labor-HHS spending bill

The year's first budget crunch arrives June 9 when the House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee takes up a $142.5 billion fiscal 2006 spending measure, which marks a $163 million reduction from the previous year.

While only a 0.1 percent cut, it is still beyond anything proposed even in the early years of the revolution led by former House Speaker Gingrich, and appropriators are bracing for the ramifications when the bill reaches the floor, probably in the third week in June.

The bill might prompt large-scale defections from Republican moderates, pitting them against House GOP leaders who usually maintain tight floor discipline.

Beyond House consideration, the bill also sets up a conference battle with the Senate. With powerful Senate support for education and health research, appropriators in that chamber already are considering the use of accounting maneuvers to add more than $3 billion to the bill's total while staying within its 302(b) allocation, expected to be essentially flat from last year's enacted discretionary total of nearly $142.7 billion.

A spokeswoman for Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., said final decisions on allocations have not been made yet, and the full committee will not ratify them until June 9.

But other congressional aides said Cochran is preparing to give Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the green light to shift into the next fiscal year the first quarter fiscal 2006 Supplemental Security Income payments to low-income elderly, blind and disabled beneficiaries.

That would free up more than $3 billion for additional spending on social services -- which would not score under the bill's allocation -- and likely would bolster medical research conducted by the National Institutes of Health, a top priority for Specter and Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Specter and Harkin initiated a similar move in the Senate's fiscal 2005 draft bill, freeing up $3.2 billion for social services spending, including a $1.1 billion increase for NIH over the previous year. In conference the House agreed to some increases, but conferees resorted to across-the-board cuts to pay for the additions because the House and White House would not accept the SSI payment shift as a legitimate offset.

Senate appropriators argued last year that since Oct. 1, 2005 -- the first day of the fiscal 2006 -- falls on a Saturday, the payments were unlikely to go out until the following Monday.

Next Oct. 1 will also occur on the weekend.

House appropriators oppose the Senate maneuvering, arguing it will enlarge the expectations of education and healthcare interests that lobby on the Labor-HHS measure. Also, it puts House appropriators' priorities at a disadvantage in conference when they start out $3 billion shy of the Senate bill.

"It's a nonstarter in conference," a House appropriations aide said of the potential Senate move.