Senate appropriators decide to pay later, not now

Last month, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., raised more than a few eyebrows on Capitol Hill when he refused to schedule floor time for a Senate version of the $13 billion fiscal 2000 supplemental spending bill the House had passed in March.

Lott argued that the cost of the package-which covered drug interdiction in Colombia, peacekeeping in Kosovo, and additional dollars for defense operations and disaster relief-had gotten out of control, and could best be restrained by splitting it up and attaching the must-pass portions to the appropriate fiscal 2001 appropriations bills.

Subsequently, Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Lott announced this week that the fiscal 2001 Military Construction appropriations bill will carry the defense portions of the supplemental, the Foreign Operations spending bill will take the foreign aid portion and the Agriculture appropriations bill will include the disaster aid. But whether Lott's approach will ultimately cost less than the House's $13 billion tab remains to be seen.

Although the supplemental is dead as a stand-alone measure, most of its components have survived-albeit in different forms.

Besides including the Colombia, Kosovo and disaster relief amounts in the first three fiscal 2001 appropriations bills, GOP leaders built other major parts of the supplemental into the fiscal 2001 budget resolution. While the House Appropriations Committee passed a $9.7 billion supplemental bill, during House debate members added $4 billion in emergency defense money.

That extra $4 billion did not die with the House-passed measure-but instead was added to the fiscal 2001 defense spending allocation in the Senate budget resolution and retained in the conference report.

So, despite GOP leaders' agreement earlier this year to keep total fiscal 2001 discretionary spending to $596 billion, with $289 billion allocated to non-defense and $307 billion to defense programs, the final tally was $600 billion, with defense appropriations of $311 billion. fiscal 2000 defense spending, without any supplemental funds, is $292 billion.

Farmers also could end up with a double dose of aid money, which could further complicate efforts to keep supplemental spending in check. Not only does the budget resolution have a reserve fund of $5.5 billion in new fiscal 2000 money to provide additional assistance payments to farmers-if authorizing legislation is passed by June 29-but it also provides $1.64 billion for fiscal 2001 payments. That money would supplement farmers' annual Agricultural Market Transition Assistance payments, which under the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act are supposed to decline through fiscal 2002. Instead, farmers last year received supplemental payments in response to natural disasters, as well as emergency assistance from the discretionary spending budget.

This year's budget now sets aside $7.14 billion for additional AMTA payments in fiscal 2000 and fiscal 2001. Senate leaders also plan to appropriate emergency supplemental fiscal 2000 discretionary funds in the fiscal 2001 Agriculture spending bill, although they have not yet settled on the amount. The House-passed supplemental included $2.34 billion for disaster aid and other emergency appropriations-a figure that some budget hawks fear may become only a floor, not a ceiling, on how much non-defense emergency disaster aid the Senate will provide.