The House Thursday evening passed, on a 311-105 vote, a $13 billion emergency spending bill to finance military and humanitarian efforts in the Balkans, sending the action behind closed doors for what promises to be a difficult conference committee.
The Senate has never acted on the Balkans funding, meaning the separate, and widely differing, disaster relief measures passed by each chamber in March will provide the basis for the conference.
The White House declined to issue a veto threat Thursday against the Balkans bill, although a senior official said of the added military funding, "We want to push that down." The price tag "has gotten too high," the official told CongressDaily. "We want only true emergency spending funded."
The conference committee is scheduled to convene Tuesday and GOP leaders from both chambers want to wrap it up in one day, get the conference report to the House and Senate floors Thursday and send it to President Clinton by the end of next week.
House Appropriations Chairman Young said after the vote Thursday: "[Senate Appropriations Chairman] Stevens and I both agreed we would like to complete it Tuesday."
Although appropriations and leadership staffers have held some pre-conference meetings, one informed GOP source said "progress has been slow" while another predicted "a tough conference."
Major sticking points include how to offset the disaster relief funds and working through the veto threats and the policy riders added by the Senate, which the Senate is fighting to retain and the House wants to drop. But in the end, a Senate source said, the sentiment "is very strong to make sure this bill will be signed."
The $1.3 billion House disaster supplemental has drawn veto threats for its offsetting cuts of $648 million in funds available to international lending institutions and $150 million in atomic emergency defense programs. A top White House official reiterated that veto threat Thursday, telling CongressDaily the offsets were "unacceptable."
The Senate added loan guarantee programs for the steel, oil and natural gas industries totaling $3 billion that the House wants dropped in conference, as well as policy riders on tobacco recoupment and some environmental issues that have prompted veto threats. Both contain aid for Central America, Jordan, and U.S. farmers.
The Kosovo supplemental, to fund operations in Kosovo and broader military readiness needs, was adopted Thursday by the House with few changes.
Another $110 million was added to back emergency loans to farmers in an amendment by Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, and an amendment by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., added $67 million for additional humanitarian aid. Latham's amendment was offset, and some of those offsets also will be used to pay for the Pelosi amendment.
But the House voted down, 322-101, an amendment by Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to offset the entire defense supplemental with a 5 percent across-the-board cut in FY2000 non-defense discretionary spending.
It also rejected, 260-164, the $11 billion Democratic alternative offered by Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis. Three Republicans voted with the Democrats for Obey's alternative: Reps. Thomas Petri of Wisconsin, Ron Paul of Texas and Tom Campbell of California.
And Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., saw his amendment to require the authorization of the Kosovo mission defeated, 301-117.
-Keith Koffler contributed to this report.