House Panel Passes Labor-HHS-Education Spending Bill

On Wednesday, July 11, the House Appropriations Committee marked up the fiscal year 2008 (FY08) Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill. The $152 billion bill, one of many held up in the House due to earmark concerns, is now ready for the House floor, almost a month behind schedule. Its passage will not be easy. Of all FY08 appropriations bills, Republican Jerry Lewis (R-CA) has labeled this one “veto bait” because spending in the House bill tacks on nearly $12 billion to the president’s budget request and exceeds the Senate counterpart by more than $2 billion.

The $152 billion bill includes an additional $975 million for No Child Left Behind programs. The markup included three successful education amendments:

1. Congressman James Walsh (R-NY): $335 million to State Special Education Grants (IDEA), which was offset by cutting unexpended funds from the Labor Department’s Training and Employment Services Fund.
2. Congressman John Peterson (R-PA): $25 million to increase funding for adult education and career and technical education basic state grants.
3. The manager’s amendment, introduced by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI), which outlines priority spending projects selected from what he said was a total of over 3,400 spending requests.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to draft the rules for debate on the bill on Monday, July 16, so the bill should reach the House floor sometime next week. As of now, there is no set schedule for the Senate to address the bill. Democrats have promised to have all twelve appropriations bills passed before October 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year. This gives Congress three weeks before the month-long August recess, and nearly four weeks in September to pass and go to conference on all the remaining bills and possibly overcome a Presidential veto.

The President has pledged to veto any legislation that goes too far over his spending requests. The Labor-HHS-Education bill is, as noted by Representative Jerry Lewis, certainly a prime candidate, exceeding the President’s request by almost $12 billion. If the President does veto the bill, the Republic Study Committee claims to have the more than the 145 votes necessary to sustain a veto, meaning appropriators will have to go back to square one and vote on new levels more agreeable to the President.

Another possible option is to include the Labor-HHS-Education bill as part of an omnibus package consisting of multiple spending bills, making it exceptionally difficult for the President to veto that much funding for government programs and operations, and even more difficult for members of Congress to sustain a veto. Democratic leaders are likely to employ whatever tactics they deem necessary in order to live up to their campaign promises to pass all FY08 spending bills on time.

Resources:
Autumn Campbell, “House Appropriators Hike Labor-HHS Spending,” Congress Now, July 11, 2007.
Authors: DAD, SAS