The appropriations process was at a standstill Tuesday, after Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's refusal Monday to take up a stand-alone fiscal 2000 supplemental, as GOP leaders and appropriators have yet to decide how to provide emergency fiscal 2000 money for priorities such as drug interdiction in Colombia, peacekeeping in Kosovo and natural disaster aid.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told the American League of Lobbyists Tuesday he expects to put the supplemental funds into the first fiscal 2001 spending bill to come out of the House-which he anticipated would be the Defense appropriations bill. And while House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., said elsewhere the Defense spending measure would go first, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told reporters there is no consensus among House leaders about which fiscal 2001 bills to move first. Armey said they will "try to coordinate that effort with the Senate," where Lott wants to pass four fiscal 2001 bills before Memorial Day, but acknowledged the leadership cannot control the order in which the bills are ready.
Stevens continued to object to Lott's approach, saying Tuesday that while he "sympathizes" with Lott's desire to keep to a tight floor schedule and not spend time on a supplemental, "I'm not sure we can accommodate what he wants to do." He noted that to do the fiscal 2001 appropriations bills, Congress must first finish the fiscal 2001 budget resolution, and then the Senate must wait for the House to act on spending bills.
In a statement released by the White House this afternoon, President Clinton said he was "very disappointed" that Lott "will not give prompt consideration" to the supplemental spending bill. "I firmly believe that any action to delay consideration of these pressing needs would impose unnecessary costs on Americans at home, to our interests abroad and to our military readiness around the world," Clinton said.
Stevens also expressed frustration with the new points of order that Senate Banking Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and other Budget Committee conservatives insisted be included in the fiscal 2001 budget resolution to enforce spending restraint. Stevens said erecting procedural hurdles to moving spending bills will only slow them down, "and the more you slow them down, the more they cost."
Stevens called the new rules "very crippling on our committee," and he said of Gramm, "I don't think he's played a constructive role at all." Stevens this afternoon said he and other appropriators will offer amendments to strike several of the points of order from the fiscal 2001 budget resolution. Gramm said he would fight that attempt and said their removal would "gut our ability to enforce the budget."