Partisan charges fly over delays in approving VA funds

The stalemate over the appropriations process continued Friday, as Senate Democratic and Republican leaders each accused the other of holding up a $3.7 billion boost for veterans' health benefits even as the Veterans Day holiday, observed this year on Nov. 12, approaches. Democrats have attached the Military Construction-VA appropriations bill to the much larger Labor-HHS measure in hopes the combined package would be enough to overcome President Bush's veto threat over $10 billion they added to the bill. Republicans attacked the plan as political gamesmanship that would only delay the VA funds. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not rule out using Senate rules to erect a 60-vote hurdle to the combined bills.

Joined Friday by representatives of veterans' organizations, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin predicted such an effort would be unsuccessful. He said Republicans were "suffering from political amnesia" in neglecting to mention they often sent much larger omnibus packages to Bush when they were in control of Congress. He said Republicans would pay a political price for delays in getting the VA funding signed. "The fate of this bill is in the president's hands," Durbin said. After the news conference, Joseph Violante, legislative director for the Disabled American Veterans, acknowledged concerns that packaging the bills together could result in VA funding being used as a "political football" and bogging down over an unrelated dispute. But he reiterated that Republicans were no strangers to omnibus packages, and that Democrats were proposing much more funding for veterans' programs than Republicans ever envisioned.

McConnell said any delay should be laid at the Democrats' feet for loading the Military Construction-VA bill, which Bush says he will sign, onto the more controversial Labor-HHS bill, which faces a veto. "That could be fixed pretty easily by splitting these two bills," he said. McConnell was joined by Senate Appropriations ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss., in a rare appearance for Cochran at a news conference. Cochran, who enjoys good relations with Appropriations Committee Democrats, nonetheless expressed genuine concern that the majority was acting out of political self-interest. "Brinksmanship, political gimmickry, all sort of phrases come to my mind," Cochran said. Attaching the Military Construction-VA measure to the slower-moving Labor-HHS bill "is inexcusable and totally unjustified, and Democrats have no real answer" as to why they are proceeding in this manner, Cochran added.

Cochran noted that although the GOP-controlled Congress had often shifted funds around to accommodate higher Labor-HHS spending than the president wanted, Democrats were adding $10 billion above his request, far more than Republicans had contemplated. "We can work out those differences as we always do. But it looks like the Democrats are trying to provoke a veto and then criticize the president as insensitive" to programs aiding poor children and others in the Labor-HHS bill, Cochran said. While noting that "I think the president is very serious about the top-line" spending number, McConnell appeared to recognize some negotiation will eventually be necessary. "At some point the gamesmanship has to stop," he said.