As new fiscal year looms, urgency grows

With fewer and fewer legislative days left before the start of a new fiscal year, Republican leaders appear ready to dig in and pursue a so-called "veto strategy" in dealing with the White House on many of the outstanding fiscal 2001 appropriations bills, including the massive and politically charged Labor-HHS measure.

At a Monday evening press event to herald House passage of the leadership's fiscal 2001 debt-reduction reconciliation bill, which calls for devoting 90 percent of next year's surplus to debt reduction and using the rest for a mix of tax cuts and spending, Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, acknowledged the time has come for a concerted effort to wrap up next year's spending legislation. DeLay said GOP leaders "are trying to light a fire that creates a sense of urgency we haven't seen in the last few weeks." Specifically, DeLay said conference reports on the Interior, Commerce-Justice-State, Energy and Water, and Labor-HHS spending bills could be taken up this week.

DeLay assured this does not mean there will be negotiations with the administration on every spending bill. "We'll stay here as long as it takes," said DeLay, to hold the line against "a President who is addicted to spending." DeLay conceded that some additional spending is inevitable on priorities such as restoring cuts to Medicare providers, fighting forest fires and emergency drought relief but vowed, "We will never surrender in the fight for fiscal discipline."

Meanwhile, Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told reporters that Republicans are commited to moving the legislation but suggested that Democrats should know, "We'll do it without you." He charged Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., with directing Democrats to oppose many spending bills on principle, but he predicted, "Democrats will oppose any bill before it gets out of the station, but then they jump on board once it is moving down the track."

Earlier Monday, following a bicameral GOP leadership meeting, House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., said that on his bill, he "would like to go through the normal legislative process" of passing a measure that reflects Republican priorities and then letting the President decide whether or not to sign it.

DeLay in particular has argued that Republicans should send the President the Labor-HHS conference report completed before the August recess-which Clinton has threatened to veto-and engage Democrats in a national debate on their competing labor, education and health spending proposals. But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has thus far resisted that approach, despite the eagerness of Senate Labor-HHS Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to throw down the gauntlet.

Echoing comments Specter made last week, Porter made a vigorous case Monday for the GOP bill, saying Republicans "are stronger than the President" in how much they would spend on several politically potent programs, such as Pell grants for college students, Ryan White AIDS funding, elementary and secondary education, and biomedical research.

Speaking more broadly about Republicans' budget endgame strategy, Porter said, "The thought that only Republicans want to go home and campaign is a thought that has no traction."

Members of both parties want to adjourn for the year as soon as possible, Porter said but added, "We're willing to wait out the process if that's what it takes."

Because the Labor-HHS conference report has not been filed yet , conservative Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., plans to offer a motion today to instruct Labor-HHS conferees to accept a provision added to the Senate-passed bill by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. The provision would block funding for the distribution of the so-called "morning after" emergency contraceptive to students 17 and under.

The Senate adopted Helms' amendment by voice vote June 30, after a motion to table it failed, 54-41.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, leaders met to hash out the issue of Medicare payment adjustments for hospitals and other health care providers hit hard by cuts under the Balanced Budget Act. But the relief may not be as high as some providers were expecting.

"It's not going to be $10 billion in the first year," said a GOP aide. "It will be lower."

How much lower still has to be worked out, and Republican leaders must remember their promise to devote 90 percent of next year's projected budget surplus to paying down the debt, the aide said.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., met Monday with the chairmen and health subcommittee chairmen of both the Commerce and Ways and Means Committees to discuss an initial time frame and overall numbers to reimburse providers for greater-than-expected losses under BBA.

The Office of Management and Budget still needs to give Congress a better idea of how it will score some proposals, said an aide. Final timing and decisions about whether a bill would go straight to the floor will have to be discussed at a future bicameral meeting, said another aide.