In rebuke to GOP leaders, House defeats Labor-HHS spending bill

In a stunning setback for House GOP leaders, the $142.5 billion fiscal 2006 Labor-HHS appropriations bill went down to a 224-209 defeat Thursday afternoon, with 22 Republicans joining all House Democrats to sink it.

Republican leaders held the vote open for 36 minutes to twist arms, but they were unsuccessful in the end and seemed surprised by the outpouring of opposition to the austere bill, which would cut $1.4 billion from the previous year's levels.

"Republicans are insisting on stretching the rubber band an extra inch and a half," said House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., who noted Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats and had to rely only on GOP votes.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., said the next step would likely be a yearlong continuing resolution for the bill, which also would trim more than $1.4 billion from last year because it is structured to fund all programs and activities at the lower of either year's levels. Another possibility is that Republican leaders will try to revive the measure in December, lawmakers said, perhaps attaching it to the Defense spending bill, although Lewis' preference is a CR.

After the vote, lawmakers said the bill was defeated by a wide-ranging coalition of conservatives who do not vote for social services spending under any circumstances, moderate Republicans upset about cuts in rural health care access, and Republicans in general who did not receive earmarks under a bill-wide ban negotiated with the Senate.

"The combination of all those things was too much for many to swallow, many of those who prefer more spending," Lewis said. And in one strange twist, House Ways and Means Chairman Thomas voted against the bill -- an extraordinary step for any committee chairman -- because of a $90 million offset derived from moving up a ban from 2007 to next year on Medicare funds for erectile-dysfunction drugs.

Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La., said he voted for the bill, but Thomas and others did not because appropriators sought to open the Medicare prescription drug law his committee negotiated. By moving up the date on which the ban would go into effect, contracts already let by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with makers of drugs like Viagra for next year could be in violation of the law, McCrery said.

Thomas could be seen in heated discussions with Lewis, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who is acting majority leader, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., who failed to dissuade the famously prickly Thomas in the end.