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House Revives Spending Bill

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By ANDREW TAYLOR

WASHINGTON - Rural health care programs would get a modest increase but funding for a wide variety of social and education programs would be cut or frozen under plans advanced Wednesday by senior Republicans to revive a $602 billion spending bill the House defeated last month.

The bill, covering many of the nation's health, education and social programs, was sent back for new House-Senate negotiations as Republican leaders sought to cap a difficult drive to freeze funding for domestic agencies whose budgets it funds each year.

Budgets for health research, education for the disadvantaged and President Bush's signature No Child Left behind education law would be frozen or cut under the bill, even before Republicans try to impose a 1 percent or 2 percent across-the-board cut on all agency budgets, including defense, to help pay for hurricane relief.

An earlier House-Senate compromise bill on health, education, welfare and labor programs suffered a startling defeat last month. To revive it, senior Republicans promised lawmakers irked over proposed cuts in rural health care grants and programs an additional $120 million for rural initiatives and education, said House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield.

"It's not a lot of money but it means a lot to rural health care," said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore.

Nonetheless, the resurrected bill is one of the most thrifty spending measures in recent memory. The pending version contains $142.5 billion in funding at lawmakers' discretion, about 1 percent less than last year in real terms after accounting for the new cost of administering the Medicare prescription drug program.

Budgets for special education and for the National Institutes of Health are essentially frozen and steep cuts remain in grant programs for medical training, community colleges, rural health care and state and local health departments, when compared with spending for the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

On education, the measure would cut spending on Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative by about 3 percent after years of healthy increases.

Republican moderates in the Senate oppose the cuts - effectively made deeper by inflation and population growth - but may see no better alternative than to accept the bill, said a senior Senate Appropriations Committee aide.

Meanwhile, a $453 billion defense spending bill is turning into a catchall vehicle to carry unrelated spending for Hurricane Katrina relief and to prevent the spread of bird flu.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., wants to double to $35 billion Bush's request to direct money previously appropriated for emergency hurricane relief to longer-term rebuilding projects.

Cochran is well positioned to push for more money, much of which would help homeowners without flood insurance rebuild or repair their homes. House conservatives want to find spending cuts elsewhere to pay for Katrina relief.

"Offsets are everything," said Mike Pence, R-Ind., leader of the Republican Study Committee, a band of about 100 House conservatives. "The American people want fiscal discipline for Christmas."

The Labor-HHS bill also contains $460 billion in automatic funding for benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, more than $100 billion more than the so-called mandatory funds contained in last year's measure.

That spiraling growth in entitlement programs is the target of a separate budget cut bill, the first attempt in eight years to rein in such spending.

While negotiators on the budget cut bill are discussing a target of $45 billion in savings from federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid through the end of the decade, there's been little substantive negotiation over the many complicated policy issues in the bill.

And an impasse between House GOP moderates and Senate advocates of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling could deadlock the talks if GOP leaders don't attract a few House Democrats who support drilling to their side.

Medicare, which provides health care for the elderly, would be targeted for $7 billion in savings, while the Medicaid program providing health coverage to the poor and disabled, would face $6 billion in cuts.

But House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said there has been little progress in nailing down an agreement.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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