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House defeats health, education spending cut bill

Posted on: Thursday, 17 November 2005, 16:41 CST

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday delivered a surprise blow to Republican spending-cut initiatives by defeating a huge health, education and labor funding bill that aimed to trim $1.4 billion in spending on the programs this year.

By a vote of 224-209, the House defeated the $142.5 billion bill. When coupled with spending on mandatory programs, the cost of the bill would have been $602 billion this fiscal year.

Twenty-two of the normally well-disciplined House Republicans joined with all Democrats to vote to kill the bill. Even holding the vote open for an extended period, a tactic employed in the past by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to twist arms, failed to secure a win.

The majority-party Republicans suffered the defeat even after pushing back an attempt by the Senate to include $8 billion in emergency funds to fight an avian flu outbreak. House conservatives worried about the high cost.

Rep. David Obey, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee who had called the spending cuts to social programs "a disgrace," said he could remember only one other time in the past 10 years that the House had defeated an appropriations bill.

Stunned Republicans were left wondering whether the vote also would worsen chances of passage this week of a $50-billion spending cut bill that aimed to reduce spending on food stamps, Medicaid, student loans and child welfare. That vote was already postponed once last week as Republican leaders tried and failed to muster enough votes for passage.

Following the House vote, Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, a California Republican, said the spending cuts combined with a hard line on funding lawmakers' pet projects for their home districts was "too much for them to swallow."

The bill made significant cuts to job training, children's health, Head Start preschool programs for poor children, the Centers for Disease Control and drug abuse programs.

Even President George W. Bush's signature education initiative, "No Child Left Behind," would have suffered deep cuts.

While these "discretionary" programs were being cut, spending on the mandatory programs would have risen by $106 billion, or 30 percent from last year's level under the bill. Republicans and Democrats have recognized the need to reverse the explosive growth of these programs.

During a House-Senate negotiating session on the bill earlier this week, there were indications the measure would face difficulties in the Senate as well.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who oversees this spending bill, told his colleagues, "I may vote against it" because of the funding cuts.

Before the House vote, Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, reflected conservative concerns about the need to cut federal spending.

He said his constituents have been telling him that "These are difficult times. We've had tremendous outlays in expenditures with Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq and that we really need to hold the line on spending."

But several provisions troubled Republicans.

Rep. C.W. Bill Young, a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said language added to the bill by the Senate "would abrogate" contracts with Medicare providers throughout the country.

Young said several Republicans also were worried about the low level of funds for health facilities in rural areas.

Source: REUTERS

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