VA health funding fix might help avert government shutdown

House and Senate Republicans moved toward an accommodation on veterans' health funds Wednesday, aiming for smooth passage of a continuing resolution extending government operations through Feb. 15.

Unrelated issues, namely contentious talks on a package of trade, tax and healthcare provisions, might cause final passage to slip to Friday, when the current CR expires at midnight. That strategy would also give senators less time to amend the CR and bounce it back to the House, a risky move given the possibility of a government shutdown.

With 10 fiscal 2007 appropriations bills left unfinished, finger-pointing continues over who is to blame.

Democrats are already plotting strategy to handle the massive workload punted onto their desks next year. "I think the deal is to urge as quickly as possible that we get an omnibus package through, to clean up the mess the Republicans left us," said Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations ranking member Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, after a meeting of panel Democrats.

Only two of 12 fiscal 2007 spending bills, the Defense and Homeland Security measures, have been signed into law this year.

Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Military Construction Subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, are pushing to complete a third, the Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs bill, which contains housing and health benefits for soldiers, veterans and their families. They said they will hold up action on the CR until the measure passes.

"If we don't come to agreement and pass it, I will raise it as an amendment to the CR. It could cause a lot of problems, but if everyone's on notice it's gonna happen I think people will listen," Stevens said. "I just said we're not going home until it passes, that's all."

But aides in both chambers acknowledged that to get the bill done at this point would require lawmakers to remain in session into the middle of next week. They said pressure from other members to adjourn this week would likely cause Stevens and Hutchison to back down, particularly now that a fix for the VA's medical account shortfall is to be included in the CR.

The agency will not get the full increase of roughly $3 billion, or 12 percent over last year, as proposed by the 2007 spending bill, until the final version is negotiated next year.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., has agreed to an exemption from the CR to allow the VA unprecedented flexibility to transfer funds to cushion medical services accounts. Combined with nearly $1 billion available from leftover fiscal 2006 funds and money that has been apportioned under previous CRs, the provision should enable the agency to get by through the middle of February, sources said.

The political pressure to soften the blow to veterans' health care was great. But lawmakers in both parties and chambers argue that government by CR should be difficult and a rare occurrence.

Some of the blame for failing to pass the regular spending bills has fallen on Senate leaders for not scheduling floor time, in hopes of avoiding politically difficult and time-consuming votes.

"The Senate should be ashamed of themselves," said House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., the former full committee chairman.

"The blame game doesn't interest this senator," Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said on the floor Wednesday. "We all share in this quiet conspiracy to duck fulfilling the most fundamental responsibility that we have, and that is to vote [on] appropriation bills."

But Domenici, one of the Senate's old bulls, clearly questioned the wisdom of avoiding floor debate on spending bills.

"I took this job knowing full well that I would have to vote. To decide, choose, and that these decisions would absolutely be second-guessed by a whole host of people. So I reject the notion that the Senate saved itself by avoiding so-called 'hard votes,'" Domenici said. "We didn't take the votes, did we? And look at the results in November. If it was our Republican approach to save ourselves, we lost ourselves."