Senate panel OKs spending bills covering eight Cabinet departments
Measures shift $9.1 billion from the White House's Pentagon request to domestic programs.
The Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday approved $729 billion in new spending for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, completing action on all of its bills before the August recess for the first time in 18 years.
The bills approved Thursday cover eight Cabinet-level departments and numerous smaller agencies -- federal spending ranging from weapons systems to cancer research.
The panel even named a yet-to-be-built courthouse after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., unusual for a sitting member of Congress. That was a compromise forged after Senate Transportation-Treasury Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., could not spare enough funds within his limited allocation to build the Nashville courthouse that Frist requested, a committee aide said.
Significant policy changes are included as well. The committee voted to codify a hard-fought deal on air service in and out of Dallas' Love Field Airport, permanently bar banks from offering real estate services, lift a ban on agricultural sales to Cuba and raise pilots' mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65.
Dealing another blow to the White House's plans for a multilateral aviation agreement with the European Union, the panel voted 19-6 to block the Transportation Department from issuing a final rule loosening foreign ownership restrictions on U.S. airlines.
Similar language is in the House's Transportation-Treasury bill. But with the United States and European Union set to ink the aviation deal in October -- well before the bill is finalized -- the move could be too late.
In fact, much of the work accomplished Thursday will be shelved until a post-election lame-duck session, where senior GOP lawmakers are already predicting an omnibus appropriations package will be necessary.
Only the national security-themed bills are expected to reach the president's desk before adjourning for the campaign's final stretch.
Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., was able to ease the brunt of his panel's $872.8 billion budget cap by shifting $9.1 billion from the White House's Pentagon request to domestic programs.
The Senate is likely to pass the Defense spending bill before the August recess, but in conference with the House that reduction is likely to be significantly restored to avoid a veto fight with the White House.
"This is the day the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul approach that has been forced on this committee hits home," said Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. "I suspect most of the modest restorations in cuts in domestic programs in the bills will prove illusory when funds are shifted back to Defense in conference."
But there is significant pressure on both sides of the aisle to free up additional spending, particularly for education and health care.
By enacting the Defense bill early in the process and soaking up much of the available discretionary funds, GOP leaders and the White House might be forced to come up with additional money to pass the more difficult bills.
That scenario is most evident in the fiscal 2007 Labor-Health and Human Services bill, for which GOP moderates in both chambers are seeking a few billion dollars extra.
Even the Senate's $142.8 billion version -- $5 billion above the White House request -- is $10.4 billion below levels approved two years ago when adjusted for inflation, said Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "We are witnessing the disintegration of the appropriate federal role in worker safety, health and education programs," he said.