GovernmentExecutive.com

Folks should know better than to try bringing a Labor-HHS appropriations conference report to the House floor.

Most years that sucker is tucked into a massive get-out-of-town omnibus bill that everyone votes for. It usually contains some program that most members want, ensuring many votes even if they don't like a lot of other things in the bill. The Labor-HHS projects get lost in the thousand pages that people are too busy trying to get home for the year to read.

But this year, appropriators actually had the nerve to bring an individual conference report to the floor. And they got their heads handed to them. The bill had enough for everybody to hate.

Democrats and moderate Republicans like the programs in the bill; conservatives do not. Money often is too tight for Democrats and not tight enough for the conservatives. Moderate Republicans are stuck in the middle.

This year, the funding in the bill was particularly tight. How tight? For starters, conferees eliminated all earmarks from the bill.

Still not impressed? Consider that the conferees stuck it to a former Cardinal.

Bucking the conventional wisdom that a program named after a senator is safe, conferees on the massive bill eliminated the "Quentin N. Burdick Rural Program for Interdisciplinary Training," a mouthful of a program for healthcare workers.

Not only was Burdick a senator for 32 years, but the North Dakota Democrat was chairman of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.

But the conferees did spare a Republican senator's namesake program, continuing to fund -- although at a lower level -- the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students program, named after the late senator from New York. And they continued to fund the Robert C. Byrd scholarship program. How would you like to approach Byrd -- the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee -- and tell him you were not funding the program named after him?

All year, appropriators have been warning that the Labor-HHS bill would be tight and they were right. The conference agreement called for $142.5 billion for fiscal 2006, compared with $143.5 billion during fiscal 2005.

Democrats immediately pointed out that many programs near and dear to the hearts of voters were cut. "This bill is a disgrace," said House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis. "There is no reason to vote for this bill."

On the other hand, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, said, "I'm proud of this bill."

Both sides jumped on the numbers. The Republican staff of the House Appropriations Committee crowed in its summary that the $56.5 billion for the Education Department "caps a history of significant growth in federal education spending. ... Since Republicans took control of the Congress, funding for the Department of Education has more than doubled. More recently, over the last five years total education spending has increased by nearly 50 percent."

Democrats, on the other hand, pointed out that the bill calls for the first cut in education funding in a decade. Significantly, the Democrats say, the conference report cuts the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind initiative by about $784 billion.

In addition, the conference report freezes the maximum Pell Grant, even though the cost of higher education continues to increase, Democrats said.

Members this week grumbled when conferees told them the conference report was going to be kosher: no pork. They said money was so scarce that they could not justify spending money on member projects at the expense of other priorities.

According to a tally by Citizens Against Government Waste, last year's Labor-HHS bill contained 3,071 projects, a 57 percent increase over the previous year. Last year's projects cost $1.69 billion, about 80 percent more than the previous year.

Much of that money went to projects at colleges and universities, as well as healthcare centers.

Others, of course, could have been considered lower priority. For instance, one high-profile project, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, received $350,000 in last year's Labor-HHS measure. Of course, no one knows if a few pork projects sprinkled here and there might have picked up enough votes to pass the bill.

Conferees also attempted to eliminate some programs not named after members of Congress.

The House had approved a plan to eliminate 57 programs from the bill. Conferees agreed to eliminate 29 of them. "That's pretty good," said a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. He said in past years, House Republicans have recommended eliminating programs, only to have the Senate refuse. Democrats charged that funding for those programs was restored at the expense of other priority programs.

The conference report isn't likely to become a bestseller, particularly since it didn't pass. On the other hand, if the issues in the report -- social spending, domestic spending, education and healthcare -- are on voters' minds next year, folks might pay attention to what happened Thursday.