By Jill Smallen & Jason Dick
Published: 04-25-08
Dems Debate Spending Plans Pay Discrimination Blocked Medicaid Moratorium Passes & Farm-Bill Within Reach
Dems Debate Spending Plans
Congressional Democrats this week mulled how to handle an emergency supplemental spending bill slated for floor debate in the next month.
The bill could include $102 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this fiscal year another $70 billion for the wars next year and a variety of domestic spending proposals that lawmakers want to attach.
Funding for expanded unemployment benefits local law enforcement programs renewable-energy tax incentives and federal research laboratories are among the many proposals being floated for inclusion in the legislation which might be the only appropriations bill signed into law before the election. But President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that exceeds $108 billion in funding for this year and some Democrats want to avoid a veto so that the Pentagon gets its money quickly.
Some Democrats insist that the add-ons should be dealt with separately because they want to vote against the war but not against domestic programs.
Some also want to attach troop-withdrawal timelines to the supplemental a move that would prompt a veto by Bush.
Meanwhile Democratic negotiators tried to forge agreement on the stalled fiscal 2009 budget resolution. A Senate-passed plan providing $35 billion in economic stimulus spending that would add to the deficit is likely to be jettisoned leaving a temporary fix for the alternative minimum tax as the major sticking point.
Medicaid Rules Moratorium Passes
Under the cloud of a presidential veto threat the House voted 349-62 on April 23 to halt for one year seven Medicaid regulations that curb states’ use of federal dollars in ways that the Bush administration considers inappropriate.
The White House issued a statement on April 22 expressing strong opposition to the bill. The regulations eliminate or cut back certain Medicaid payments to states in response to federal reports detailing loopholes in the system.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that the moratorium legislation faces opposition in the Senate noting “I feel quite confident there will be significant resistance.”
Indeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell R-Ky. and Minority Whip Jon Kyl R-Ariz. oppose the bill as does Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley R-Iowa.
But House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Joe Barton R-Texas said last week that he believes both chambers would have enough support to override a veto.
Pay Discrimination Bill Blocked
The Senate on April 23 blocked a bill aimed at making it easier for employees to file pay-discrimination lawsuits. The measure garnered 57 supporters—six Republicans and all Democrats—on a procedural vote but that was three votes shy of the 60 needed to advance.
The legislation sought to overturn a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling last May that upheld a six-month statute of limitations in a pay inequity case involving Lilly Ledbetter a female tire-plant supervisor who was paid less than male supervisors.
The House approved a measure last July reversing the Ledbetter ruling. Senate Democrats portrayed the procedural vote as a women’s rights issue and vowed to use the issue against Republicans in the fall campaign.
“Women who get up every single day and go to work deserve to be paid equally to their male counterparts” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton D-N.Y. said. Republicans argued that the law’s six-month statute of limitations was a reasonable requirement.
They also blasted Democrats for holding the vote at 6 p.m. so that Clinton and rival Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill. could return to Washington following Pennsylvania’s presidential primary the day before.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona the presumptive GOP presidential nominee did not return to the Capitol for the vote.
Farm-Bill Deal Within Reach
With an agreement on a new farm bill inching ever closer the Senate on April 24 passed another one-week extension of the 2002 farm bill until May 2. The House was expected to follow suit. President Bush called for a one-year extension but he was expected to sign the short-term stopgap to avoid antiquated laws from the 1930s and 1940s from taking effect.
House-Senate conferees have finished work on noncontroversial sections of several titles of the bill but have not taken up controversial issues such as payment limits to farmers or whether Congress should ban meatpackers’ ownership of livestock shortly before slaughter.
Votes also loom on certain proposed reforms to the Commodity Exchange Act. Behind the scenes Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus D-Mont. and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel D-N.Y. led negotiations to produce a package of tax law changes that would offset the cost of the farm bill’s $10 billion spending increase over 10 years.
In addition Senate Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman Tom Harkin D-Iowa told reporters on April 24 that negotiators had agreed to a package of tax breaks in the farm bill of between $1.4 and $1.6 billion.
