Senate Republicans Fret over Spending Bill, Decline to Threaten Filibuster
By Liriel Hagel
Congressional Quarterly
February 7, 2007
The Senate is on track to vote next week on a stopgap spending measure to fund most domestic programs though fiscal 2007, despite Republican complaints about its contents and expected Democratic efforts to block amendments.
With a week to go before the government’s funding runs out, time is running short. Republicans expect Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will move to prevent them from offering amendments through a parliamentary maneuver known as “filling the amendment tree.”
Reid has not yet said if he will try to thwart GOP efforts to alter the measure.
Still, it looked increasingly likely Wednesday that Republicans would not try to filibuster the continuing resolution, or CR (H J Res 20), which could risk a government shutdown. The current stopgap spending bill (PL 109-383) is set to expire Feb. 15.
The CR, already passed by the House, would fund agencies covered by the nine annual spending bills that the GOP-led 109th Congress did not complete last year.
Earlier this week, Reid said he had at least one letter from a Republican senator threatening a filibuster. When asked about that prospect Feb. 6, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., replied, “That was news to me.”
Wednesday evening, Reid said staff from both sides had exchanged papers and that Democrats wanted to work with Republicans. “We’ll continue those discussions,” he said on the Senate floor.
One fiscal conservative, Tom Coburn, R-Okla., wrote to McConnell on Feb. 6, indicating that he would object to considering the resolution without a chance to amend it.
“Senators should not be denied the opportunity to debate and amend such a far-reaching bill that funds nearly all aspects of the federal government’s domestic and foreign aid programs,” he wrote. “I would, therefore, object to any unanimous consent agreement that prohibits amendments.”
Coburn wants to extend the current CR a few weeks if necessary to allow more time to consider the Democrats’ spending measure.
His fellow fiscal conservative, Jim DeMint, R-S.C., dismissed the idea that Republicans would try to filibuster the measure. “I know they’re trying to use brinkmanship here to try to force — force us to play our hand,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re going to play that game.”
DeMint said there is enough time to debate amendments. “The current stopgap spending measure lasts for another week, and the House can easily take up our final bill and pass it in a matter of hours,” he said.
And Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, called for an end to the practice of filling the amendment tree. “I think the CR is dreadful. The CR leaves my subcommittee in a terrible state,” Specter said.
Specter lamented that funding for the National Cancer Institute was inadequate.
“I hope none of you ever need cancer research,” said Specter, a cancer survivor. “But if you do, you don’t want to see the cancer budget.”
AIDS Testing
Coburn, meanwhile, is upset over a provision in the bill prohibiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from spending money on one of his favored programs. The program, authorized by Congress last December (PL 109-415), would give money to states that conduct universal HIV/AIDS testing for newborn babies and for pregnant women, and for patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics and substance-abuse treatment clinics. Patients are allowed to opt out of such testing.
Coburn spokesman John Hart accused Democratic appropriators of targeting the <Coburn>-favored program. “It is disappointing that some Democrats seem to prefer payback, not progress. Slashing funding for baby AIDS formula grants and putting thousands of babies needlessly at risk of HIV infection is a perverse way to exact political retribution,” Hart said.
Tom Gavin, spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee, called Hart’s comments “unfortunate” and said the decision to prevent funding for the program resulted from a determination that no states would currently qualify for it.
Supporters of the program say states could become compliant quickly if they were eligible to receive a piece of the $30 million annual pot authorized by Congress.
DeMint, meanwhile, focused on trying to ensure that the administration would not be pressured by lawmakers into honoring earmarks included in last year’s committee reports for bills never enacted.
DeMint, Coburn and other Republican conservatives wrote to President Bush, asking that he “clarify that agencies of your administration will not be bound or give any preference to earmarks continued in committee reports or in direct communications from members of Congress or their staff.”
