Negotiators for the House and Senate have agreed to back down on including extra funding within the supplemental spending bill, and are doing so to avoid a veto fight with the White House. The emergency spending bill, which is set to fund war efforts (which after this long should not be funded through the emergency procedure) and hurricane disaster relief, will most likely cost no more than $94.5 billion.

This amount is significantly closer to Bush's initial $92.2 billion limit, but far less than the $109 billion supplemental bill passed by the Senate May 4. That bill garnered intense criticism from Republicans, including Majority Leader Frist (R-TN), for including excessive spending on non-emergency earmarks, and circumventing the standard budget process to do so.

At 1:30 AM last night the House passed their version of the budget resolution after Majority Leader Boehner had repeatedly put off the vote because he didn't have enough support to pass the bill. The $2.8 trillion measure, H.Con.Res. 376, just barely passed 218-210 after moderates led by Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) decided to support the measure. The moderates had originally proved to be a thorn in the side of the leadership on this vote but ultimately caved yesterday, agreeing to support the resolution even though the deal they were seeking (for an additional $3.1 billion for health and education programs) came in the form of a promise as opposed to real changes in the resolution. Apparently Castle and others received assurances that this extra money would not come from cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, or other programs for the needy.

Rep. David Obey (D-WI), a Democrat in strong opposition to the budget resolution, was particularly critical of the moderates, saying: "I was wondering whether the Republican moderates were going to stick to their guns when they said that they knew that it was wrong to pass a budget that provided $40 billion in tax cuts for people who make a million dollars a year while you're squeezing the guts out of education and health programs. We now know the answer. They are doing a poor imitation Bert Lahr, the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz.... The fact is, they are now selling out for a promise that if some time in the deep dark distant future somebody does something to change this budget resolution, then there might be a table scrap or two left for additional education and healthcare." Lawmakers generally are not expecting a conference agreement on the measure to be worked out with the Senate, which passed a bill spending $16 billion above the House version.

Zero Democrats crossed the aisle to support this budget resolution, although three, Kennedy (D-RI), Larson (D-CT), and Stupak (D-MI), did not vote. Twelve Republicans rejected the budget. These were Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Gerlach (R-PA), Goode (R-VA), Hostettler (R-IN), Johnson (R-IL), Jones (R-NC), McHugh (R-NY), Otter (R-ID), Ramstad (R-MN), Renzi (R-AZ), Sweeney (R-NY), and Wilson (R-NM).

The Budget Resolution Increases the Debt Limit

Authors of the budget resolution slipped in easy-to-overlook yet very important language concerning the U.S. debt limit, which Congress last raised by $653 billion on March 16. Passage of this bill would automatically increase the debt limit again to almost $10 trillion next year, and has it moving to $11.3 trillion by FY 2011. This provision is nothing more than House leaders trying to pull one over on the American people. An automatic increase of the debt limit would free them from having to actually vote on an increase next year, and would allow them to avoid the (well-deserved) scrutiny that would accompany the fifth debt ceiling increase since President Bush took office. If the debt limit increases to $10 trillion next year, it would mean that the level of federal debt will have increased under President Bush by almost $4 trillion. When he took office, the debt ceiling sat at $5.95 trillion. No President has come close to increasing it a fraction of what Bush has done. The language to increase the debt limit can be seen in the bill on page five.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has indicated that if he has the votes he will hold a vote on the House budget bill potentially as early as friday. Interestingly, this $2.7 billion budget plan includes language in it, as reported in today's Washington Post, that would bump up the federal debt ceiling yet again, to almost $10 trillion. This would be the fifth debt ceiling increase in recent years, and it would mean that the level of federal debt will have increased under President Bush by almost $4 trillion.

This information can be found in the House Concurrent Resolution on the Budget; and in this version it is located on page 129. It says:

The adoption of a conference agreement by the two Houses on a concurrent resolution of the budget would result in the engrossment of a House Joint Resolution adjusting the level of the statutory limit on the public debt pursuant to House Rule XXVII, in consonance with clause 3 of that rule. This resolution contemplates a joint resolution of the following form:

Resolved, by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $9,618,000,000,000.

If the joint resolution is enacted to raise the debt limit to the level contemplated by this resolution, the limit will be increased from $8.965 trillion to $9.618 trillion, an increase of $653 billion.

Congress last increased the debt limit in March, by an amount of $653 billion. The fact that they are suggesting increasing it again, and this time under the radar screen in the budget resolution, is extremely troubling. Congress and the administration cannot continue to spend money without being held accountable for it. Every time the debt goes up, annual interest on the debt (which is budgeted into federal spending every year) goes way up. Increased spending on the interest on the debt more often than not leads to a greater squeeze on domestic discretionary programs. As we said in a statement regarding the last debt limit increase:

The need to increase the debt limit yet again is a direct result of the fiscal policies and practices implemented by Bush and Congress over the past five years. While the administration blames the increase in U.S. debt on both the 2001 recession and the costs of the war on terrorism, in reality the cost of his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, ringing in at $225 billion in 2005 alone, carry far more of the blame for the burgeoning rise in national debt....

Allowing this level of national debt to accumulate is both unfair and irresponsible. Every single U.S. citizen now carries $28,000 of national debt burden, and this number will dramatically increase unless Congress makes some real changes to current fiscal policies. At a minimum, Senators and Representatives should be having real conversations and debate about what is wrong with current budget and tax policies and how to fix them.

Update on the supplemental spending bill: The Senate passed a $109 billion supplemental last thursday, which ended up being significantly higher than the bill passed by the House on March 16th (which was $91.9 billion).

A number of Senators voted against the bill because they felt it contained spending that should not have been in the "emergency supplemental." This group included Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Tom Coburn (R-OK), who has been a ring leader in the fight against including extraneous provisions in emergency bills. Coburn stated, "In emergency legislation, we have a lot of things that really aren't emergencies. I think we as a body ought to look at that and use self-discipline."

The final vote count was 77-21; with two Senators (Hatch (R-UT) and Rockefeller (D-WV)) not voting. Interestingly, all Senators who voted against the bill were Republicans. The Senate will have a difficult negotiating session ahead with the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) called the Senate bill "dead on arrival," and Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) promised that the final bill will not spend "One dollar more than what the president asked for, period." The president himself threatened to veto any bill costing significantly more than he requested. This is the same president, however, who has yet to veto anything.

On April 27, the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution held an oversight hearing on the Line Item Veto Act of 2006. Christina Martin Firvida, Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center, testified the bill would

give the President unprecedented power to suspend, and effectively cancel, provisions of law enacted by Congress, even after Congress has rejected the President's rescission proposal. The expanded rescission power would apply not only to appropriations, currently subject to a more limited rescission authority, but also to direct spending for programs upon which millions of Americans rely.

The rest of her testimony is available here. The Senate Budget Committee will hold hearings on the line-item veto this week, and Congress is expected to act on the issue this summer.