OMB chief tells Congress to stop holding spending bill 'hostage'

In a meeting Tuesday with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels urged congressional appropriators to finish work on the fiscal 2002 supplemental by the end of the week.

Daniels said the bill must be kept at the House-passed level of $28.8 billion as scored by the House Budget Committee and OMB--the Congressional Budget Office scores the House package at just over $30 billion--and all "non-essential add-ons" must be removed to garner the president's signature. "It's time we passed this supplemental … and stop holding this hostage for extra spending," Daniels said.

As negotiators continue to haggle over the Senate's desire for a $2.7 billion increase in homeland security funds above the administration's and the House's hopes to boost defense accounts, Daniels said they do not belong in the supplemental and could be handled in 2003.

And although Daniels admitted that some of the funds Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., wants for homeland security "would be handy to have available," he indicated that the administration would be willing to accommodate those funds only on a "standby basis," much in the way the House bill includes a $1.8 billion contingency fund for defense that the president can tap if needed.

"The answer to some of the request [from Byrd] is `No,' and for others it's `No, not now,'" Daniels said.

Meanwhile, Daniels praised House appropriators for writing their 302(b) spending allocations for the 13 appropriations subcommittees at the president's budget level of $749 billion. He said while some of the larger domestic bills, such as the Commerce-Justice-State and VA-HUD spending bills are reduced below the president's request, the administration supported the allocations and would be content seeing them enacted.

"These are the only limits around and I think they are acceptable," said Daniels, noting the Senate's failure to pass a budget resolution.