House, Senate conferees wrap up final two spending bills

Conferees wrapped up work Tuesday on the two largest annual spending bills--Defense and Labor-HHS--setting the stage for House votes today on the $123 billion Labor-HHS bill and Thursday on the Defense and Foreign Operations bills, the last fiscal 2002 bills.

While Senate sources hoped that chamber also could adopt the three conference reports by Thursday, House sources cautioned that might not be possible.

House sources said the conference report on the $317 billion Defense bill and $20 billion supplemental, as well as the $15 billion Foreign Operations measure--which was stalled over funding for international family planning--will be filed early Thursday for floor votes later in the day.

Given the logistics of filing the last conference reports, House sources cautioned that Thursday's House votes might not occur until late at night--meaning the Senate might not be able to vote on the final measures until Friday.

After a week of haggling over the $20 billion supplemental portion of the Defense bill, the chairmen and ranking members of the two Appropriations committees agreed to allot $3.5 billion for defense, $8.2 billion for domestic recovery aid to the areas hardest hit by the Sept. 11 attacks and $8.3 billion for homeland security.

The homeland security portion includes $2.5 billion for bioterrorism prevention, $500 million for the Postal Service to buy detection and irradiation equipment, and nearly $400 million for the Customs Service.

Combined with the first $20 billion of the supplemental that the White House controlled, the $40 billion package approved in the wake of Sept. 11 would provide a total of $17.2 billion for defense, $11.1 billion for New York and other affected communities, and $9.9 billion for homeland security, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

In addition, the administration has allocated $1.5 billion from its $20 billion pot for foreign aid and has another $300 million left to allocate.

Also included in the supplemental will be language permitting federal agencies to tap their regular budgets to pay the Defense Department for beefed-up security services provided by the National Guard--but no new money.

And over White House objections, the bill will stipulate that the administration direct the last $300 million of its $20 billion toward rebuilding the Pentagon.

As the last fiscal 2002 conference report of the year, the Defense bill also will contain language to raise the statutory cap on discretionary spending to $686 billion in budget authority, to reflect the agreement the White House and appropriators reached in October.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who was thwarted in his effort to add another $15 billion to the supplemental, called the final package a compromise and noted in a statement: "It does not provide all of the funding that is needed for homeland defense, local recovery initiatives or the military effort. At the same time, it does not shortchange any of these priorities. It takes solid steps toward accomplishing all of these goals."