Intent on moving a bill, House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., Thursday unveiled an $89.4 billion fiscal 2000 Labor-HHS spending proposal.
The bill stays within its $73 billion allocation by including $15.7 billion in advanced appropriations-as well as roughly $300 million in emergency funds for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program, National Journal News Service reported.
"[We can fashion] a bill that can pass through the process ... and reflect the spending priorities of the legislative body, or we can fail to send a bill to the president and then he and the executive branch can sit at a table like they did last year and effectively write every line item in the bill. Well, for me, that is no choice at all," Porter said.
Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., used the hearing as another opportunity to criticize the GOP budgeting approach, which he said uses advance spending and emergency funding to get around unrealistic budget caps.
"We all came here because we wanted to be a part of the best legislative body in the world," Obey said. "The problem is this bill has come to epitomize how phony our legislative process has become, and how trivialized we all have become in the process. This bill is a fantasy."
Meanwhile, the Senate Republican Conference received a budget reality check Thursday from Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Budget Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., on what it will take to keep their pledge not to spend next year's Social Security surplus or raise taxes.
With only a $14 billion non-Social Security surplus to absorb any discretionary spending over the FY2000 cap, emergency spending and a tax cut next year, Domenici acknowledged, "It's pretty rough." Domenici said the GOP Conference "thoroughly discussed the various combinations of things that have to take place so that we don't touch Social Security," but made no decisions. Domenici also said the Finance Committee has requested as much as $4 billion of the $14 billion surplus for a tax "extenders" bill, which would give appropriators even less to work with, but "the question is do we believe an extender bill can get passed" without the protection of reconciliation (see previous story).
Regarding the Senate's Labor-HHS appropriations bill, Domenici said "there's still a lot of confusion" among senators about how they can write that bill. Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., later said that advance FY2001 appropriations will be "a big part" of balancing that bill, which he hopes to mark up next Wednesday.
Earlier Thursday, the Concord Coalition held a briefing to urge Congress to renegotiate the budget caps using more realistic assumptions and honest budgeting than the watchdog group thinks are being used now.
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