Health, education programs may gain as Dems reconcile funding pleas

Health and education programs might see a $2.3 billion increase over last year under the long-term fiscal 2007 budget plan Democrats are drafting, making them among the few winners in an otherwise limited funding environment.

Lawmakers and interest groups are making last-minute pitches to the House and Senate Appropriations committees as they put finishing touches on a continuing resolution covering the entire fiscal 2007 domestic budget. The needs are many, the resources are scarce and time will be tight when the massive $463.5 billion spending bill comes before the House Wednesday.

The tightly controlled House can prevent amendments, but the free-flowing Senate cannot, and it will have only 10 days to debate the bill after the House acts. The existing funding resolution expires Feb. 15.

Senate Labor-Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, was cautiously optimistic his request for additional funds for programs under his panel's jurisdiction would be included. But he acknowledged Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., are trying to reconcile many competing demands.

The extra $2.3 billion Harkin wants would go to such programs as the National Institutes of Health, Title I education, Pell grants and community health centers.

Byrd and Obey do have several billion dollars of room to maneuver, since they are using last year's enacted budget as a starting point. They can also rescind unspent balances in various accounts, and eliminating new earmarks might yield additional savings.

To underscore the difficulty, in some cases appropriators are still juggling the numbers to prevent cuts from last year's budget. For example, state and local law enforcement assistance programs -- largely eliminated in President Bush's request -- received more money last year than appropriators were able to give under fiscal 2007 budget caps.

Both parties want an increase of about $3 billion for veterans' health care, plus $2 billion more for military health programs. If Harkin and Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., have their way and get the $2.3 billion, those programs alone could claim much of the available money.

"I don't want to jinx it, but we're going to get some money," Specter said. Even with such increases, domestic programs are barely keeping pace. The $2.3 billion influx would simply get the Labor-HHS budget back to appropriated levels of two years ago.

But it would amount to a $7 billion hike above Bush's fiscal 2007 request, over which a number of House Republican moderates openly clashed with their leadership last year. They came up with only a portion of that total, and the Labor-HHS bill was shelved. A number of those GOP moderates lost re-election.

There might be other beneficiaries. Universities, companies such as Google and Intel, and numerous lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have petitioned for increases above last year for the National Science Foundation and Energy Department's Office of Science.

Both House and Senate Appropriations committees approved roughly the same increases for both agencies in their initial versions of the spending bills, totaling about $900 million. UCLA and Northrop Grumman Corp. recently joined forces to lobby House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for the extra money.

Transportation funds are a concern for the road-building industry, unions, highway program administrators and numerous lawmakers. Led by Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., 72 senators wrote to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Thursday about the need to fully fund highway and transit programs at the levels called for in the 2005 transportation authorization bill.