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A Failed Congressional Ploy
WASHINGTON - The ploy had been hatched behind closed
doors by Democratic leaders of both houses. A pork-laden
appropriations bill filled with $1 billion in earmarks
would combine with veto-proof spending for veterans.
Instead, the two measures were decoupled in a Senate
party-line vote last Tuesday.
The Democratic scheme to present President George W.
Bush with a bill that he could not veto seemed a clever
strategy, but it was based on presumption of Republican
ignorance and cowardice. As late as last Monday, savvy
GOP Senate staffers predicted Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's
decoupling motion would fail. In fact, she did not lose
a Republican senator, as Democrats fell far short of the
60 votes needed to keep the two bills together.
During a confusing week on Capitol Hill, lawmakers engaged
in games difficult for insiders to understand and incompre-
hensible for ordinary voters. As the first Congress
controlled by Democrats since 1994 nears the end of its
first year, the desire to bring home the bacon trumped
concern over the falling dollar, the crisis in Pakistan
and the continuing conflict in Iraq.
The reason that not one of 13 appropriations bills had
reached the president's desk was Bush's threat to veto at
least 10 of them. Doubting their ability to override these
vetoes, Democratic leaders conjured up combined packages
that Bush would dare not veto. The earmark-heavy
appropriations bill for the Labor and Health and Human
Services (HHS) departments would be joined with the Defense
bill, which funds Iraq, and with Military Construction,
which contains money for veterans.
The Defense component was quickly removed after protests by
Rep. John Murtha, influential chairman of the House Defense
Appropriations subcommittee. But plans for a Labor-HHS
merger with Military Construction went forward. A stand-
alone bill containing veterans money had passed the House,
409 to 2, on June 15, and a similar measure got Senate
approval, 92 to 1, on Sept. 6 -- measures Bush would sign.
But Democrats held off final passage so they could meld it
with Labor-HHS, which they did in last week's Senate-House
conference report.
At the same time, the pork content of Labor-HHS grew.
Citizens Against Government Waste found 2,274 earmarks in
the bill worth $1 billion. They include $1.5 million for
the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute and $2.2 million
for the AFL-CIO Appalachian Council. Democratic Sens. Byron
Dorgan and Kent Conrad, North Dakota's two professed budget
balancers, got $1 million for Bismarck State College. Sen.
Arlen Specter, the Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations sub-
committee's ranking Republican, procured $882,025 for
"abstinence education" in his home state of Pennsylvania.
The conference report's "compromise" Labor-HHS bill at
$151 billion was actually more expensive than either the
House or Senate version. It contains a $1 million earmark
for a Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and
Representative Democracy at South Dakota State University
to honor the former Senate majority leader who was defeated
for re-election in 2004. Sponsored by Senate President Pro
Tem Robert Byrd and Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Daschle
Center was one of nine earmarks "airdropped" into the final
version by the Senate-House conference without being passed
by either the Senate or House. Silently removed from the
bill by the conference report was the prohibition, passed
by the Senate in a rare defeat for earmarkers, against
spending $1 million for the Woodstock "hippies" museum in
Bethel, N.Y.
In the past, if a point of order against an appropriations
bill was affirmed, the whole bill would die. But a new rule
pressed by Democrats this year made it possible to split
veterans spending away from Labor-HHS without killing the
bill. All 46 Republican senators present voted to sustain
the point of order, so that the Senate fell 13 votes short
of the 60 votes needed to keep the two bills together.
Consequently, the Senate last Tuesday again had to pass the
bloated Labor-HHS bill. It did, but by a 56 to 37 margin,
short of a veto-proof majority, as 19 Republican senators
changed their affirmative vote from the last time they
considered this bill. In an extraordinary outburst against
the 19 switchers, Majority Leader Reid called them "sheep
and chickens" who had "chosen to defend a failed
president." In truth, he had just lost an audacious ploy.
By Robert D. Novak
I'm in so much trouble now because of my OPENESS to politic's or should I say my OPINIONATED ASS.. So I say unto you!! Get all people over the age of 45 out of OUR, goverment's office's and let's start all over again from the ground up!! Anybody who thinks I'm off on this remark all I can say to you is
WELCOME TO AMERICA !!! Is It Not
GRAND??
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