House Narrowly Backs Emergency Spending (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

House Narrowly Backs Emergency Spending

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 1, 1998; Page A07

The House by a paper-thin margin passed a special $2.9 billion disaster 
relief and defense spending bill yesterday, offsetting the cost by cutting 
domestic programs despite the threat of a presidential veto.

The emergency appropriations bill did not include $18 billion sought by the 
administration for the International Monetary Fund and included in a pending 
Senate measure. The House has put IMF funding in a second bill to be taken 
up sometime after the upcoming spring recess.

The House voted 212 to 208, with 17 Republicans crossing party lines to 
oppose the measure yesterday. The bill must go to a conference to be 
reconciled with Senate legislation. Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob 
Livingston (R-La.) said the conference would convene as soon as possible 
after the spring recess that begins Thursday.

He acknowledged that the narrowness of the margin presaged heavy going in 
efforts to get the Senate to accept the House's insistence on offsetting 
yesterday's expenditures with domestic spending cuts. The Senate's bill has 
no offsets.

"Nobody can dismiss the fact that this is a difficult bill," Livingston 
said. "There's no way to predict what will happen."

Yesterday's bill provides $2.3 billion to maintain peacekeeping operations 
in Iraq and Bosnia and for other defense spending, and $575 million in 
disaster assistance for damages associated with El Ni¤o storms.

Faced with a revolt from the House Republican rank and file, GOP leaders 
offset the spending by cutting $2.2 billion in low-income housing rental 
subsidies and $700 million from previously budgeted airport construction 
funds, bilingual education programs and AmeriCorps, President Clinton's 
national service volunteers.

In a Monday letter, the White House raised objections to the House bill, 
saying spending for authentic emergencies did not need to be offset, and 
that White House advisers "would recommend the president veto this 
legislation if it contains such offsets."

For this reason, Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) branded the 
measure "the wrong bill, constructed in the wrong way with the wrong 
offsets." Dunning domestic programs to pay for it, he said, "makes no 
sense."


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