White House, Congress finally reach deal on spending

President Bush and congressional appropriators today finally inked their deal to set the total fiscal 2002 discretionary spending level at $686 billion, or $25 billion over the FY02 budget resolution.

The increase, which Bush will outline in a letter to Congress rather than a formal budget request, includes an additional $18.4 billion for defense, $4 billion for education and $2.2 billion for emergency disaster relief.

Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and a spokesman for House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., both confirmed the agreement this afternoon. Even with an FY02 spending total in hand, appropriators must cover considerable ground before the current continuing resolution that is funding the entire federal government's operations expires Oct. 16.

House and Senate Appropriations staffers began Monday to work through the funding differences between their respective versions of the various bills.

The widest discrepancies are on the Energy and Water, Transportation and VA-HUD bills. The House-passed Energy and Water bill came in at $23.7 billion, while the Senate bill was $25 billion; the House's Transportation bill was $14.9 billion, while the Senate bill was $15.6 billion; and the House's VA-HUD bill was $84.1 billion, plus another $1.3 billion in emergency funding, while the Senate bill was $84 billion, with $2 billion in emergency funding and about $1 billion less than the House for FEMA's regular operations.

Appropriations and Office of Management and Budget staff have also discussed the terrorism supplemental in recent days. Congress appropriated $40 billion in emergency money last month. The administration so far has released $6.9 billion. The first $20 billion was made available to the administration to release in consultation with Congress, but the administration must formally request the second $20 billion, which then must go through the regular appropriations process.

An OMB official said the administration was "days away" from submitting a timetable for the second $20 billion. Congressional sources widely expect the supplemental to be attached to the final FY02 bill of the year, which most likely will be the Defense bill.

Neither the Defense nor the Labor-HHS bill has been marked up by either the House or Senate Appropriations committee, although the House Labor-HHS Subcommittee was tentatively scheduled to mark up its bill this evening.