Senate Set to Clear Supplemental

By Josh Rogin, CQ

The Senate is set to bow to the House in their long battle over whose plan for the supplemental spending bill will reach the president’s desk.

The House on Thursday evening approved its latest version of the measure (HR 2642), which would provide $161.8 billion in war funding, an expanded veterans’ education benefit, an extension of unemployment insurance and money to deal with flooding in the Midwest.

Senators from both parties had fought hard to include domestic spending of about $10 billion above President Bush’s stated limit and had approved a version with that level, 75-22, last month.

But after weeks of negotiations and with the military running short of money, Senate Democrats reluctantly endorsed the deal that House Democrats finally struck with the White House and GOP leadership, potentially ending the back and forth of the bill.

House Democratic leaders used a procedure that sent the measure to the Senate after two votes but without a final vote on the overall package.

The House concurred with a Senate amendment that would provide the war funding by a vote of 268-155. A second amendment that would provide the domestic spending was adopted, 416-12. The revised package was then automatically sent to the Senate to be cleared.

The parliamentary maneuver allowed Democrats opposed to the Iraq War to vote against the military funding but in favor of the unemployment benefits and other domestic spending.

Disappointed Senators Will Likely Go Along

Although Senate Democrats were disappointed that many of their priorities did not make it into the final House version, they were realistic about the need to support the bill now and fight for their items later.

“When time is used as leverage against you, sometimes the other side wins,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., referring to the House’s eleventh-hour dealmaking, “It’s not everything we were looking for, but we’re happy that the funding for military operations will be taken care of.”

The administration officially endorsed the House package Wednesday in a statement of administration policy.

“We urge both the House and Senate to immediately pass this bipartisan agreement,” the White House Office of the Press Secretary said in a statement.

The Senate’s Democratic leaders said Thursday that they would bring the House package to the floor next week and expressed cautious optimism that it would clear that chamber.

“I’m not a dictator over here,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who supports the bill. “The individual senators will have to make a decision on what they will do on this.”

But many Senate Democrats said they would fall in line and allow the bill to clear without much objection. Many touted additions that were included over administration objections, including a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits and the largest expansion of veterans’ education benefits since World War II.

“At this point, I assume that we have gotten a much better deal than anyone expected, and it’s a good deal for all of us,” said Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Although the Senate’s Republican leaders have not commented yet on the spending package, they were expected to follow the White House’s lead.

The House dropped various items that had been in the Senate bill, including $1billion for a low-income home energy assistance program, $490 million for Byrne law enforcement grants and $451 million for the Federal Highway Administration’s emergency relief program.

But the measure still contains a modest amount of funding for domestic discretionary spending, such as $150 million for the Food and Drug Administration for food and medical product safety, $178 million for the Bureau of Prisons for incarceration costs, and $210 million for cost overruns for the decennial census.

The long list of scrapped items, many of which had been added during a Senate Appropriations Committee markup in May, prompted several Senate Democrats to call for a second supplemental bill this year focused on domestic needs.

“I have every reason to believe the committee will meet again to consider a second supplemental,” said Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.

Reid, Murray and Richard J. Durbin, D‑Ill., endorsed the idea of a second supplemental, although none could give any specifics about when or how such a bill would materialize.

Even Senate Republicans were irked by the House’s unilateral decision to scuttle Senate priorities.

“It seems that the House has taken out of the bill whatever they want, and we’re going to take it that way,” complained Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M.

But in the end, the approaching deadline for completing the bill before the military runs out of money for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the Senate to go along.

“No one likes this process,” said Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D. “But the plain fact is we’re coming to the edge of the cliff here on time, in terms of passing something.”
Lack of House-Senate Coordination

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., defended her chamber’s measure, arguing that the bill’s inclusion of several non-requested items represented a victory for Democrats.

”You don’t do everything in one bill,” Pelosi said. “It is important for us to have a bill that will be signed because we have to get the job done.”

House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., who led the negotiations over the measures, acknowledged that the lack of consensus between the House and Senate contributed to the tortured path between the chambers.

“The problem, I think, is that a number of people on both ends of these issues preferred to chew their cud more than once,” Obey said. “And so we ended up the House sending a vehicle over to the Senate; the Senate added everything but the kitchen sink to it, sent it back; then people decided they wanted to express their first preferences all over again.”

The bill also includes $1.2 billion in food aid, $374 million to help support international peacekeeping missions, $220 million for international disaster assistance in places such as Myanmar, and $390 million to fight international narcotics trafficking.

The bill would give $8.8 billion for State Department and foreign operations through June 2009.

The bill would bar any permanent bases in Iraq and require that any money for Iraqi reconstruction be matched by the Iraqi government dollar-for-dollar.

The total cost of the bill is $186.5 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal 2008 and 2009, as well as $62.8 billion for the veterans’ benefits and $8.2 billion for the unemployment extension, both over 11 years.

“The cost of the bill, frankly, is high, but it’s a price of freedom,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.

Liriel Higa, David Clarke and Chuck Conlon contributed to this story.