Republican congressional leaders are confident they can get the $15 billion supplemental fiscal 1999 appropriations package approved by a House-Senate conference committee last Thursday passed this week.
The measure provides $12 billion for military and humanitarian operations in the Balkans; $574 million-including $149.2 million in food aid to Kosovar refugees-in agriculture money to address the ongoing economic crisis in the farm sector; and $2 billion primarily in disaster aid to hurricane victims in Central America and tornado victims in the Midwest. The $2 billion also includes $100 million for Middle East peace efforts in Jordan.
Among the controversial defense additions above President Clinton's $5.45 billion request that were retained in the supplemental are $1.8 billion for a military pay raise and increase in retirement benefits, and $475 million in military construction funds that Defense Secretary William Cohen may spend at his discretion.
The conference report, which the House Rules Committee will take up Monday afternoon with a House vote expected Tuesday, also contains a number of legislative riders and non-emergency provisions-for which $2 billion in offsetting cuts are provided.
The offsets, which are endorsed by the White House but which drew vociferous objections from House Democratic conferees Thursday, include a $1.25 billion rescission from unspent surplus balances in the food stamp program. The committee said those savings would result from fewer participants in the program and emphasized they "will have no effect on beneficiaries."
Other offsets include $350 million from unspent money within the Section 8 public housing program, $22.4 million from the Labor Department's contingency fund for unemployment insurance administration and $39.5 million from military construction accounts.
Of the major legislative provisions, the conference report retains language allowing states discretion to decide how to spend money recouped from tobacco companies in their legal settlement.
The bill also includes several riders opposed by environmentalists that were included in the Senate version, but not in the House version. House members accepted an amendment by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Murkowski and ranking member Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to extend the moratorium on final rules for valuing oil, and blocking new regulations that would have increased the royalties paid by drillers.
The final bill also includes language championed by Senate Minority Whip Reid that blocks the Interior Department from issuing final rules on hardrock mining on federal lands. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., struck a deal with House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, to allow a Washington state mining company to escape a provision of the 1872 Mining Law in order to receive a federal permit. Under the agreement, any mine currently applying for a permit cannot be denied for using too much land for mining wastes. The ban will be for one year.
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