Spending bill gets stuck on funding for farmers

Alan Fram; The Associated Press
The News Tribune

2/12/03

WASHINGTON, D.C.- House-Senate bargainers agreed to add NASA and defense money to a government-wide spending bill whose cost has surpassed $396 billion, but failed to complete a compromise Monday when they deadlocked over aid to farmers.

Barely a week after space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, lawmakers agreed to provide NASA with $50 million to investigate the accident that killed all seven astronauts, a congressional aide said Monday. The space agency's total budget would be $15.4 billion, $414 million more than Bush requested and $513 million more than last year's total, with the shuttle program itself getting more than $3.2 billion.

At the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, negotiators agreed over the weekend to add $6.1 billion to help the Pentagon defray some personnel and operations costs in Afghanistan and other nations where it is confronting terrorists.

Along with $3.9 billion the Senate added last month for intelligence operations, the new money essentially would fulfill the request President Bush made a year ago for a $10 billion military contingency fund that he would control. Congress ignored the initial proposal because it would have had little say over the money.

Negotiators met for two-and-a-half hours Monday night in a jam-packed room steps from the Senate chamber in hopes of resolving final disputes.

But they broke up with the House refusing to approve $3.1 billion the Senate wants to help farmers. House lawmakers want more of the provision's funds directed at victims of the ongoing drought, and are refusing to pay for the money with cuts in most other programs in the overall bill.

Aides said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has told the White House that the agriculture package must be included for the overall bill to pass the Senate, a sentiment echoed by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

"There will be no bill without the drought provision," he said as Monday's session ended.

Democrats complained that there was not enough money for local law enforcement agencies and other domestic security programs, land conservation, education and Head Start preschools for poor children.

"These cuts are unwise given the increased threat level under which we are all now living," said Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, top Democrat on the Appropriations panel.

Underlining the spending pressures facing both parties, the White House has now signed off on more than $10 billion over the $385 billion that Bush originally demanded as the bill's top price tag.

The bill's details were described by congressional aides and lobbyists on condition of anonymity.

The roughly 1,100-page compromise bill would finance every domestic agency and pay for foreign aid for the federal budget year that began Oct. 1. Lawmakers already enacted two bills to provide $365.6 billion for defense for this year, and the administration is expected to request billions more in a few weeks.

The rest of the $2.2 trillion federal budget covers Social Security and benefits paid automatically.

Removing one obstacle, bargainers agreed to an estimated $49 billion over the next decade to increase Medicare reimbursements to doctors and some hospitals.

Democrats failed to kill language backed by the timber industry to increase logging in Alaska's 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest and make it harder for environmentalists to block such activities. Another provision would greatly expand the Forest Service's ability to enter agreements with lumber companies to maintain - and remove trees - from much of the 191 million acres it manages nationwide.

In another fight, bargainers dropped a provision sought by the airlines to make voluntary and unpaid the training its pilots and flight attendants are now required to take - with pay -- in handling episodes of terrorism and other violent incidents aboard flights. The 50,000-member Association of Flight Attendants opposed the measure.

The budget for the Interior Department and other land and cultural programs would drop more than $200 million below the $19.3 billion they received in 2002.