By Congressional Quarterly
Published: 05-12-08
House Democratic leaders will try again this week to move a war supplemental spending package that their own conservative Blue Dogs have stalled.
The Senate plans to finish an overhaul of the federal flood insurance program and both chambers may take final action on a massive new five-year farm bill that has drawn sharp criticism from the White House.
The war spending package would provide enough money to keep military operations going in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring.
But the measure stalled in the House because it carries a major expansion of GI Bill education benefits for veterans — spending that would continue long after the period covered by the bill. The White House has threatened to veto the legislation if the benefit expansion remains in it and members of the Blue Dog Coalition are demanding that Democratic leaders offset the new spending with cuts elsewhere.
Party leaders in turn are telling the Blue Dogs to come up with suggested offsets.
Veterans’ groups and liberal Democrats were irked by the Blue Dogs’ stance.
The delay caused by the Blue Dogs provoked a backlash by veterans’ groups as well as several members of the liberal Out of Iraq and Progressive caucuses Thursday who demanded that the supplemental bill be brought to the floor in its original form.
“How can the Blue Dog Coalition possibly say that an expansion of education benefits is too costly when their votes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight in Iraq violate the same pay-as-you-go rules they claim to so deeply respect? It’s an inconsistent logic” said Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey D-N.Y.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd D-W.Va. on Thursday abruptly postponed his panel’s scheduled markup of its war supplemental bill until May 15 after the House said it wouldn’t act until next week. But Byrd warned “My patience is growing thin.”
