Bush's Domestic-Spending Limits Unravel in Senate's Budget Bills

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Bush's Domestic-Spending Limits Unravel in Senate's Budget Bills

By DAVID ROGERS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 13, 2005; Page A3

White House-backed spending caps, adopted by Congress in record time this spring, are fast wilting as Republicans come to grips with domestic demands for the new year that begins Oct. 1.

The Department of Veterans Affairs informed Congress of revised cost estimates showing an ever-larger funding shortfall for medical services. Following the London bombings, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) wants a $1.1 billion increase for mass-transit security. And the Senate Appropriations Committee gave initial approval to a labor, health and education budget bill that adds about $3.7 billion to President Bush's program requests, largely by resurrecting an old budget ploy of delaying some benefit payments past the end of the fiscal year.

The same money scramble influenced votes last evening on rival plans to distribute homeland-security funds among states. On a 71-26 roll call, senators agreed to a new formula giving the administration more flexibility to assign funds according to risk, not a minimum state formula. But a still more-aggressive risk-assessment approach -- backed by Texas and California -- failed 65-32 because of fears over the impact on smaller states.

The budget maneuvering is seen in the huge $604 billion labor, health and education bill moving through the Senate. To get around the spending caps, Supplemental Security Income payments due at the end of September 2006 would be delayed by a few days to Oct. 3, so they register as payments in fiscal 2007. The result is a quick $3.3 billion in paper "savings," much of which the committee would pump into increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Covering the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services, the measure is the largest of the annual domestic spending bills that Congress must approve each year. Abortion-counseling restrictions, which angered family-planning groups last winter when adopted by Congress, would be relaxed by Mr. Specter, who also reached out to the right in the stem-cell research debate by increasing funding to encourage the adoption of unused embryos at fertility clinics.

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Almost a third of the extra 2006 costs are attributed to long-term care. The department appears caught between two demands: one generated by the returning troops, and the second reflecting an aging veteran population faced with higher drug and care costs and cuts in services by states, affecting the elderly poor under Medicaid.

Write to David Rogers at [e-mail]

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