While the Senate and House are both deliberating renewal of the SCHIP program, they have each offered bills with significant differences. Here's a brief summary to keep it all straight.

Families USA has a more detailed side-by-side indicating differences other than cost and revenue scoring.

Note that the Senate bill appears to be fully offset while the House bill comes up short. The apparent shortfall is made up in a section of the House bill that would make significant changes to Medicare. Among other provisions, the House bill would increase by $31 billion Medicare benefits and physicians' payments. The increased spending would be offset by a $50 billion reduction in the Medicare Advantage program. When all the Medicare provisions are tallied up, the total cost of the House bill is $25 billion, which is more than offset by the $27 billion in tobacco tax revenue. The Senate bill, however, would not make changes to Medicare.

Given the substantial differences between the two chambers' bills, the conference committee will no doubt be rather spirited.

• JCT scoring of Senate SCHIP revenue vehicles
• CBO cost and revenue estimates of Senate SCHIP provisons
• JCT scoring of House SCHIP revenue vehicles
• CBO cost and revenue estimates of House SCHIP provisons

On the budget battle brewing between congress and the president, does public opinion lean toward the veto-happy Bush or the Democratic majority? The Center for American Progress investigates.

A recent poll finds that 18-29 year-olds want a bigger government with more services.

The Democracy Corps poll was conducted May 29 - June 19 and included 1017 18-29 year-old respondents.

Generally speaking, would you rather have a bigger government providing more services or a smaller government that provides fewer services?

Bigger government, strongly .................... 40
Bigger government, not so strongly........... 28
Smaller government, not so strongly......... 12
Smaller government, strongly................... 16
(Don't know/refused) ................................ 4
Total Bigger government.......................... 68
Total Smaller government ........................ 28

(via Atrios)

• In the last minutes of yesterday, the Senate passed FY 2008 Homeland Security funding - its first appropriations bill for the next fiscal year. And the veto-resilient vote - 89-4 - bodes ill for the White House. The House approved its measure short of the veto-proof margin of 292 'yeas' (268-150), an so eyes will glance over to the presidents drawer where he keeps his veto pen in anticipation of Bush following through with his veto threat.
• Earlier this week, the House passed Commerce-Justice-Science (226-55) and Transportation-HUD (225-43). Both were met with veto threats because they would violate the president's discretionary total ceiling.

Periscope up!

The Wall Street Journal reports today that "Federal investigators are examining whether Rep. [Don] Young [R-AK] or Sen. [Ted] Stevens [R-AK] accepted bribes, illegal gratuities or unreported gifts from VECO Corp., Alaska's largest oil-field engineering firm."

The investigation is part of a continuing criminal probe of alleged political favors for the company. The issue under investigation is whether Young or Stevens accepted bribes or unreported gifts from VECO. Young is the former chairman of the House Transportation Committee and now its ranking Republican. Stevens, former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is the longest-serving Senate Republican.

VECO has been awarded a series of federal contracts since 2000, including contracts to provide logistics support for arctic research. Young received $157,000 in campaign contributions from VECO employees and the company's political action committee between 1996 and 2001. Congressional records show that Stevens several times added extra funding for arctic research above what the agency sought.

The chart below, prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows VECO ranking number one and two in corporation campaign contributions to Rep. Young and Sen. Stevens respectively since 1989:

Source: Wall Street Journal
(click to enlarge)

In a letter sent Friday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) invited President Bush (R-$$) to a sit down to discuss the "relatively small differences" between spending legislation making its way through Congress and the president's request. Hoping to avoid a budget showdown, the Democratic leaders are seeking to meet Bush somewhere in between.

Our committee chairmen have worked closely with their minority members to develop spending plans that build on your work where we agree, and reflect a broad, bipartisan approach to the services the federal government provides.

Given our relatively minor difference over total spending levels, we are hopeful we can quickly reach an agreement that funds America's priorities in a timely manner, so long as both sides negotiate in good faith.

Read the entire letter here.

Several (well, 62 to be exact) of the 147 congresspeople who signed a letter promising to sustain every presidential spending bill veto are already wavering in their commitments. CQ has an interesting analysis ($) of the four FY 2008 House- approved appropriations bills that have drawn veto threats from the president. Sixty-two of the 147 congresspeople who have pledged to sustain a veto have voted for at least one of the measures. Four of 147 signatories have voted in favor of all four of the bills, while three have voted for three.

The CQ article also contains some choice quotes demonstrating the unreliability flexibility of several representatives. Here's the key line in the letter that the 147 Republican congresspeople signed when they pledged their support to the president to sustain his vetoes:

Should you veto an FY 2008 appropriations bill because it would contribute to an overall spending level that exceeds your budget request, we will sustain that veto.

One possible interpretation of that line is "should the president veto a spending bill, I will vote to sustain it."

Other interpretations, however, bound such rigidity. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-MD) understands that a letter with the line "will sustain the veto" is more of "a marker, it sets a tone, but the letter in my judgment does not draw a line in the sand." Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS) says that the letter is not really so much a pledge to perform some specific action like "sustaining that veto" as "a statement of general principle."

As vetoes become more certain, expect more representatives articulating their flexibility in the months to come.

Yesterday evening, the House voted 276-140 to pass the $607 billion ($151.4 billion discretionary ) Labor-HHS-Education spending bill.

The president expressed his dismay at raising the level of funding above 2005 levels for the following programs when he issued a veto threat on Tuesday:

• financial aid for college students
• the president's own No Child Left Behind education initiative
• medical research
• low-income heating assistance
• funding for children with disabilities
• health education
• monitoring the health of the emergency responders who were exposed to toxic debris when the World Trade Center collapsed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks

For more about what's in the bill, see this post from the new blog by the National Women's Law Center -- or this piece on OpenCongress.org.

The view from the balcony:

• The House washed its hands of Energy-Water when they voted 312-112 to pass the $31.6 billion bill.
• Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee handed its bill off the to Senate Appropriations Committee

Also: President Bush continues his Gregorian-esque chanting as he issues another veto threat. This time, he takes a swipe at Labor-H's massive $2 billion excess [/sarcsm] of his requested level and its language on matters related to reproductive health.

The view from the outside:

Man bites dog: the administration is balking at some cuts that House Appropriations Committee chair Rep. David Obey (D-WI) has made made to the Labor-HHS bill. A brand new veto threat of that bill, issued today, reads in part:

The Administration strongly opposes the $629 million reduction in the Reading First program. While the Administration recognizes the significant issues outlined in several Inspector General reports, the Department has addressed these problems and implemented all the IG's recommendations.

What the veto statement doesn't say is that the Reading First program remains under investigation for allegations of strong-arming local school districts into using textbooks by publishers favored by the administration. (See here, here, and here)

I had been under the impression that the purpose of Bush's sudden rash of veto threats of spending bills was to demonstrate his deathbed conversion to the principle of fiscal responsibility. But maybe I fail to appreciate the supply-side nature of the spending in this case -- due to its stimulative nature, would spending on the Reading First program end up paying for itself?

A tax on tobacco is a regressive tax, and so equity-based opposition to a tobacco tax increase generally makes sense. However, if the tax will be used to fund an expansion of a fiscally progressive program, then it is possible that the net result will be progressive. I spent some time this morning compiling info that would give some indication of how the SCHIP expansion would shake out. Well, someone has already done the yeoman's work and crunched the numbers. The fiscally conservative, but nonpartisan Tax Foundation state their opposition in this article, they essentially make the progressive case for tobacco-tax-funded SCHIP expansion.

Now, an income-tax-funded expansion would be more progressive, but given a filibuster-happy senate and veto-mongering president, this is a best-case scenario.

To fully offset a $35 billion expansion of SCHIP, the Senate Finance Committee has proposed raising tobacco taxes to about $1 per pack. The Joint Committee on Taxation released reports on the proposed revenue changes on Friday.

• Estimated Revenue Effects Of The Revenue Provisions Related To The State Children's Health Insurance Program
• Description Of The Revenue Provisions For Markup Of The State Children's Health Insurance Program

The five-year revenue generation from the proposed tax would be $35.7 billion, with a ten-year total of $71.1 billion.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, for 61¢ per pack of cigarettes, the plan would extend insurance coverage to 4.1 million children who would otherwise not be insured. Citing CBO figures, the Center also points out that conservative talking points that the plan would primarily encourage parents of privately insured to switch to SCHIP are simply false.¹

In other words, nearly two-thirds (66 percent) of the children who would gain SCHIP or Medicaid coverage under the bill are children who would otherwise be uninsured, not children who would otherwise have private coverage.

Compassionate Conservative^® President Bush, meanwhile, remains adamantly opposed to expanding health care coverage to children.

¹I am shocked - shocked! - that conservatives would misrepresent the facts to further an ideological agenda

• Senate and House Appropriations Committees begin work this week marking up Agriculture
• House Appropriations Committee will also take up Defense this week

Our story so far...

BNA has published a trendline comparison ($) of the number and the dollar amount of actual FY05 and proposed FY08 legislative earmarks and implies that, thus far in this year's process, numbers for both are heading down.

"Of the five bills for which data had been posted July 13, earmark totals were mostly down in comparison with the 2005 figures," BNA says.

We looked at BNA's findings and did some math, as follows:

• Financial Services -- reduction in earmarks: 65 fewer; $150 million reduction in spending
• Interior and Environment -- reductions: 1000 earmarks and $600 million
• Labor-HHS-Education -- reductions: 2000 earmarks and $600 million
• Homeland Security -- increases: 14 earmarks and $200 million
• Military Construction -- 70 fewer earmarks but $3.5 BILLION more in spending

So, guess which part of "earmark totals were mostly down" doesn't count?

When Hall-of-Famer Mickey Mantle clouted the ball out of the park, the home run was called a "tape-measure shot." But no one ever actually took out a tape measure to quantify Mantle's clout.

This appropriations season -- for the first time ever, thanks to earmarks disclosure -- the clout of members of Congress can be measured in dollars, down to the nearest million or so. Let's have a look at the Commerce-Justice-Science (C-J-S) bill, approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 28 by a 28-1 vote, and see how the home run derby contestants measure up.

Over 600 earmarks comprising a total of $470 million were disclosed in the bill. C-J-S subcommittee chair Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and ranking member Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) socked away about $25 and $93 million respectively. Shelby's take alone was roughly 40 percent of all the GOP dollars.

Other senatorial sluggers:

• Thad Chochran (R-MS): $57 million
• Daniel Inouye (D-HI): $20 million
• Robert Byrd (D-WV): $16 million

Let's keep things in perspective though: earmarks account for a fraction of one percent of all the spending in the $54.4 billion bill.

Source: Congressional Quarterly ($)

The Senate Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, a part of the Senate Appropriations Committee, passed its version of the FY 2008 Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill (HR 2829) by a party-line vote of 5 to 4.

If you're still with me, this bill would do a couple important things. First, it limits funding for the IRS private debt collection program, but not so much that it would violate congressional procedures. A similar version of this limitation was struck from the House's bill on procedural grounds (See this Watcher article for more) . The Senate would not eliminate the program, presumably, but it could contain it so that it probably won't do much more damage.

Second, it funds IRS operations at $11.1 billion, which is significantly higher level than last year, but lower than the $11.6 billion that the IRS Oversight Board recommended. Full funding of the IRS could reduce the tax gap, which would free up more revenue for program expansions and make the tax code more fair and progressive.

And third, it would defund the part of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) that's in the executive branch. As you may recall, Vice President Cheney has been saying he's not really in the executive branch, and therefore isn't subject to an executive order that establishes some oversight over the OVP when it classifies information. This measure may make the OVP's operations more transparent to the public, and help Congress hold the Vice President accountable if he or anyone else in his office, besides Scooter Libby, has done anything wrong.

Of course, this is only the subcommittee- the bill has a ways to go. But it's off to a pretty good start.

Congress is back from its week-long July 4th vacation and will, among other things, try to get pass some more spending bills. This week in the House:

• Transportation-HUD is in full Appropriations Committee
• Labor-HHS is in full Appropriations Committee

• Commerce-Justice-Science is in full Appropriations Committee
• Energy-Water pork is divvied up by Appropriations Committee

• Defense is in subcommittee
• Agriculture is in subcommittee

The Senate Appropriations Committee takes up Financial Services and HUD sometime this week

BNA: ($)

"Republicans want to work with Democrats to deal with the issues the American people sent us here to deal with. Unfortunately, Democrats have decided to go their own way," House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters June 26.

I think the good Congressman spent too much time in the sun over the July 4th recess. I don't see how leading a party that has 147 of its members pledging their fealty to the president to sustain any veto he issues is a party willing "work with Democrats to deal with the issues the American people sent" them to Washington to do. That's not a compromise, that's trying to get Democrats to holler "uncle!"

The federal government incurred a deficit of $123 billion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2007, CBO estimates, $83 billion less than the shortfall recorded during the same period in 2006. Revenues have risen by more than 7 percent, whereas outlays have grown by less than 3 percent. Both rates of growth are noticeably smaller than the rates of increase in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, which averaged about 13 percent for revenues and close to 8 percent for outlays.

(click on CBO logo for report)