Today the House cleared the FY 2006 Defense bill by voice vote, but forced another short delay in Congressional adjournment by modifying an extension of expiring Patriot Act provisions which was passed by the Senate. The Senate is now planning on returning at 8:00 this evening (after their long day yesterday) to clear the revised legislation (S 2167). The bill, which is set to expire December 31, would extend 16 provisions of the 2001 anti-terrorism law.

Yesterday the Senate wrapped up work on the last two appropriations bills, eighty-two days after fiscal year 2006 began (which is the deadline to pass appropriations bills). In their desire to wrap up appropriations work, GOP leaders hammered out a resolution enacted by voice vote, which states that once the House approves a modified version of the FY06 Defense appropriations bill, the Labor/HHS conference report would be deemed passed in the Senate. The bill passed funds FY 2006 health, education and labor programs, as well as defense authorization legislation. It also includes a six-month extension of the Patriot Act.

The Labor/HHS bill is $1.5 billion less than it was last year, and this cut is before the across-the-board spending cuts are enacted this year. The final Defense bill did not include ANWR language. Senate Democrats put up a fight to keep it out of the bill, effectively thwarting the attempts of Senator Stevens (R-AK) and a few others to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil drilling. The Senate ended up voting 93-0 to approve the defense bill without the drilling authority.

Senate Republicans were also able to push through a $40 billion budget cuts bill yesterday. The vote was 51-50, with VP Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote. Even though the Senate passed this bill, Democrats were able to use a parliamentary objection to strike three small provisions from the bill, which means it will need to go back to the House for a final vote sometime in January.

Washington Post: Senate Approves Cuts, But Not Drilling

New York Times: Arctic Drilling Opponents Cheer Nip-and-Tuck Vote

After voting 52-48 on the procedural challenge previously mentioned, the Senate voted 50-50 on the budget cuts bill. The bill they voted on is different from the one which came out of conference in that it does not include some minor language concerning medicaid liabilities and a number of government reports.

The Republicans who voted with all of the Democrats against the bill were Snowe (ME), Collins (ME), Chafee (RI), DeWine (OH), and Smith (OR). Vice President Cheney flew back from Afghanistan for the sole purpose of being present in case his vote was needed to break the tie, which it was.

Now that this bill was passed, the House will need to act on it because it was different from the bill they passed early monday morning. How and when they will take up the bill is currently unknown.

The Senate voted 52 - 48 not to waive a procedural challenge to the budget cuts bill - and removed some language concerning medicaid liability and a number of government reports. Regardless of how the final vote goes, the House of Representatives will need to act again before the cuts will be finally passed.

All Democrats voted with Republican Senators Snowe, Chafee, and Smith to support the procedural challenge.

We haven't directly mentioned this yet here, but the inclusion of language opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the defense appropriations bill is an awful decision. Not only is the provision not related to the defense appropriations bill (and therefore should be struck through a procedural challege), but it is also a crude, callous, and reprehensible attempt by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and other Republicans in the Senate who favor drilling in ANWR to coerce those opposed to the provision to support it because of fear as being castigated as "unpatriotic" for voting against the defense bill.

This is the ultimate stacking of the deck; it is no longer about policy and debate, but rather which side can best manipulate the rules to their advantage. Those who have conspired to hold the Defense appropriations bill hostage until the bitter end of the session to force members of Congress into a corner should be ashamed of themselves - and not because opening ANWR is bad policy. They should be ashamed simply because they are manipulating the system in a perverse Machiavellian game where the ends justifies the means, but neither are in the best interest of the country.

The Senate adjourned last night without taking votes on the budget cuts bill, postponing them until this morning. They are expected to begin voting at 9:15 am Wednesday morning.

The Democrats are planning on a small set of procedural challenges before a vote on the final bill. Certain provisions in the bill may violate the "Byrd Rule," which prohibits extraneous matters in reconciliation bills, conference reports, and other resolutions. If these challenges are upheld by the Senate parlimentarian, Senator Gregg (R-NH) will move to waive the rule. This would require 60 votes.

If one of the challenges are upheld and not overturned by a motion to waive, the offending provision will be removed from the bill and it cannot be passed until the House returns because there will now be two different version of the bill. In this case, it is still unclear how the GOP leadership will proceed.

And don't forgot, they still have both the Defense authorization bill and Defense Appropriations bill - which could face a filibuster because of the ANWR provision - to finish today and more debate on the Patriot Act renewal. Should be a jam-packed day in the Senate.

The U.S. Senate is supposed to be spending 10 hours today debating the budget cuts reconciliation bill. But a substantial portion of the debate has been spent sparring over the reauthorization of the U.S. Patriot Act and the inclusion of ANWR in the Defense Appropriations bill.

While these are certainly very important debates to be had, it's hard to understand why the debate is not about the budget cuts. Do Senators not have anything to say about the cuts? Do they think the changes they will vote for shortly are unimportant? Are Senators ashamed of what they are proposing in this bill?

Luckily, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has just got the debate back on track and is making some excellent points about shared sacrifice. You can watch live on C-SPAN 2.

According to a report in The Hill, the large and powerful group AARP sent a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) saying they will "make sure that our members across the country fully understand the impact of this conference agreement on them and on their families." AARP plans to use the vote on the budget bill to hold Senators accountable during the midterm elections at the end of next year, according to AARP's director of policy and strategy John Rother.

While this late announcement - on the day of the vote - is unlikely to swing any Senator's votes today, it does underscore the importance of the vote.

Read The Hill Story: AARP Officials Say They Will Remember Budget Bill in '06

Below is a list of cuts in the budget reconciliation bill currently being debated on the Senate floor:

• Medicaid: Low-income families will have to pay more than they can afford for medical care under Medicaid and face shrinking benefits.
  
  
• SSI: People with disabilities will have to wait as long as a year to receive the back SSI benefits they are owed because the government has taken so long to approve their application.
  
  
• Child Support: Children will be deprived of $2.9 billion over 5 years/$8.4 billion over 10 years in child support not collected because of cuts in enforcement.
  
  
• Foster Care: Grandparents or other relatives in certain states will lose foster care assistance.
  
  
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: The agreement assumes that work requirements will be made more harsh and expects states to fail — and so estimates that states will pay penalties to the federal government. The Congressional Budget Office expects that states will in turn create harsher penalties for poor families, causing more to lose benefits.
  
  
• Child Care: CBO estimates that it will cost $12.5 billion in new funding to pay for the harsher work requirements and to keep up with the costs of providing existing child care. The budget deal only provides $1 billion — a gap of $11.5 billion. That means 255,000 fewer children will receive child care in 2010 compared to this year.
  
  
• Student Loans: Cut $12.7 billion over 5 years.

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) is speaking on the Senate floor right now, calling the final agreement on cuts in the bill from the agricultural committee "neither balanced nor fair." Chambliss applauded GOP leaders for keeping cuts to food stamps out of the final bill but believes the rest of the cuts to agricultural programs will hurt farmers and America in the long run.

Chambliss still plans to support the final bill.

The House-approved budget bill -- which the Senate will soon vote on -- contains a measure raising federal pension insurance premiums that employers pay to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's (PBGC) single-employer insurance program. If the Senate passes this bill, the rates will increase from $19 to $30 per participant, starting in 2006. These rates have not increased since 1991. Managers of mulit-employer pension plans will also see rates rise from $2.60 to $8.00 per participant. These rates have not increased since 1988.

These pension provisions, which could very well be superseded next year by the enactment of comprehensive pension legislation, will save an estimated $417 million in 2006 and $3.56 billion over five years. The measures were designed to force companies to both keep enough money in their pension funds to be able to meet their obligations to retirees, and to contribute more to the floundering PBGC, which is the government's pension insurance fund.

The Senate is expected to vote later today on a $39.7 billion dollar budget cuts bill. The vote is still not a done deal with a few possible procedural challenges under the "Byrd Rule" because of a provision concerning the Milk Income Loss Contract program and possible challenges due to welfare language.

Even if those challenges fail, most are expecting an extremely close vote, with the possibility of Vice President Cheney breaking a 50-50 tie. We'll be updating and posting developments from the Senate throughout the day today. Check back often for the latest information and news.

The House passed the budget reconciliation bill early this morning (around 6:00 am) by a vote of 212 - 206. Nine Republicans opposed the bill along with all Democrats who voted. There were 10 Republicans and 6 Democrats who did not vote. In addition, there were 6 Republicans who opposed the House version of the cuts in this bill in November but supported the amended cuts this time.

The bill cuts $39.7 billion from entitlement programs over the next five years, including child support, student loans, and Medicaid and Medicare. The cuts to food stamps have reportedly been removed. In order to pass the bill, the GOP leadership removed language opening the Artic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling and attached that language to the Defense Appropriations bill, which also passed early this morning. The spending cuts bill now awaits Senate action early this week.

UPDATE: OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass had this to say on the House budget vote:

The second close vote in the House on the Budget Reconciliation bill in as many months represents yet another significant step backwards for our country. The conservatives cut spending for programs serving poor and moderate-income families, in order to pay for a seemingly unending thirst for more tax cuts for the wealthy. These are the absolutely wrong priorities.

This vote showcased how the House of Representatives is increasingly captive to a radical minority of GOP members who are out of step with the values and needs of America. The end result will be an increased deficit and less support for the most vulnerable. That such a vote took place in the wee hours, right before the holidays, shows just how empty the phrase compassionate conservatism rings.

The House also passed a $453.5 billion Defense spending bill early this morning, as well as the the FY06 defense authorization conference report. The Defense appropriations bill was passed with a bipartisan 308 - 106 vote, even though the bill includes the contentious ANWR language. The bill also includes $29 billion in Gulf Coast rebuilding aid and $3.8 billion for flu preparedness. The bill also includes a much-anticipated one-percent across-the-board cut to discretionary spending outside of Veteran's Affairs.

It is still unknown how the Senate will vote on this bill. If the Senate does reject the bill - most likely due to the inclusion of ANWR - the House would have to reconvene to solve the impasse, because the current continuing resolution funding government operations expires December 31.

The continuing resolution that is currently funding government operations expires tomorrow night at midnight. And although many are anxious to complete their work and leave for the holidays, Congress has not yet finished the appropriations work they were supposed to complete almost three months ago. Instead, they have spent much of their time on tax and budget reconciliation work, which - unlike appropriations - are not necessary bills for Congress to pass in order to fund government operations.

Because lawmakers have been consumed by reconciliation work, they will be in the Capitol this weekend, trying to wrapping up work on approps. The House will likely vote Saturday on the Defense appropriations conference report, and Sunday on the budget conference report. Meanwhile the Senate is not only considering attaching ANWR language to the Defense bill, but also possibly the entire Labor/HHS measure. Sen. Specter (R-PA), chairman of the Labor-HHS -Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said this move would happen because the measure does not have the votes to pass on its own. Congressional leaders have, unfortunately, let other work - such as superfluous tax cutting and harmful budget cutting - get in the way of their ability to complete appropriations work in a timely and thorough manner.

Posted by Becky Lewis, 06:38:58 PM



CBO Releases Another Depressing Long-Term Outlook

The Congressional Budget Office released their Long-term Budget Outlook today, in which they noted

Even if taxation reached levels that were unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies could become financially unsustainable. An evergrowing burden of federal debt held by the public would have a corrosive and potentially contractionary effect on the economy.

And although this administration has been touting their economic growth lately, the CBO points out that economic growth itself is "unlikely" to bring the nation's long-term fiscal position into balance, especially if we accrue ever-larger amounts of debt.

Sen. Specter (R-PA) announced today that the new conference report for the Labor/HHS appropriations bill that passed the House on Wednesday will be added to the Defense appropriations bill. The reason Specter gave for this move was that there are not enough votes to pass the bill as a stand alone measure.

This is purely bad legislative process. It is a radical tactic to handcuff Senators to vote for legislation they do not support under the fear of being branded unpatriotic for delaying or not approving defense funding. Is this really what the most deliberative legislative body in the history of the world has sunk to? Coercion?

As we are currently seeing happen with ANWR, the GOP is using whatever deplorable tactics necessary, even delaying a bill funding the military for three months to use as a mechanism to pass unpopular legislation that would not have even a majority support on its own. The pressure of the holidays must really be getting to those in Congress who are desperate to pass something, anything at all, before they wrap up for the end of the year. We expect better of the U.S. Senate.

We have been saying a lot lately that Congressional GOP budget and tax policies look out for the wealthy by providing them with tax cuts, while at the same time hurt the poor by robbing social programs of funding in the name of fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction. While this is true, there is more to the picture. As Josh Lynn and Robert Gordon have recently discussed at Think Progress and in the American Prospect, the latest GOP policies are also responsible for discouraging hard work and self-reliance - two ideals endlessly promoted in conservative rhetoric. Lynn and Gordon write

[the cuts] to Medicaid, food stamps, and child care, for starters — punish working Americans by undermining incentives to hold down a job, or by essentially classifying them as “too rich” to collect assistance.

Additionally, the tax burden is blatantly being shifted from capital to labor, as witnessed by the House's recent passage of the tax reconciliation bill extending low capital gains and dividends rates. Policies such as these reward wealth while making it harder for the average working family to pay the bills.

Posted by Becky Lewis, 06:17:59 PM



House Passes Labor/HHS Bill; ANWR Attached To Defense Bill

The House passed a $602 billion Labor/HHS Appropriations bill yesterday by a close vote of 215-213, nearly one month after twenty-two Republicans surprisingly voted with Democrats to defeat the initial bill that came out of conference. In the vote, all Democrats and only 12 Republicans voted against the bill, which provides $142.5 billion in discretionary funding (the remainder is automatic spending on entitlement programs). This discretionary amount is 0.1 percent - or $163 million - less than what was appropriated for FY 2005, and $785 million more than President Bush’s budget request.

In order to pick up support for the bill, appropriators increased rural health spending by $90 million and, in a nod to Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), struck a provision barring Medicare coverage of erectile dysfunction drugs. The overall cost of the bill did not change, however, because money added was offset by a $120 million reduction to an HHS vaccine fund.

The Senate will most likely clear the measure later today, even though there is widespread bipartisan dissatisfaction with this bill, which is the most austere Labor/HHS bill seen in decades. Overall, the bill cuts nearly $1.5 billion from the FY05 levels; however, if a 1 percent across-the-board cut is implemented later this week (as is being pushed by GOP leaders like Dennis Hastert (R-IL), total cuts would approach $3 billion.

Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said that even though the measure provides insufficient funding for major health and school programs, he expects it to pass. He said, "I will vote for it if my vote is needed to pass, otherwise I will vote against. There is not enough money in it."

In other appropriations news, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) - the Senate's biggest proponent of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling - has attached the ANWR provision to the Defense appropriations bill. The defense bill also includes funding for hurricane disaster relief, and Stevens, who is the chair of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee said, "It’s going to be awfully hard to vote against Katrina [disaster assistance]. . . . If it’s in there, then maybe those disaster people — area people — will vote with me on ANWR." This move will also likely clear the way for Congress to pass a roughly $42 billion deficit reduction reconciliation bill that was being held up partially over ANWR language.

Stevens has had some difficulty amassing support for ANWR, particularly from House Republicans, a number of whom refused to vote for their version of the budget reconciliation bill until the leadership removed ANWR language from the measure.

Posted by Becky Lewis, 03:30:33 PM

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