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More cash OK'd for NASA and defense
By Alan Fram, Associated Press, 2/11/2003
Barely a week after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the Southwest, lawmakers agreed to provide NASA with $50 million to investigate the accident that killed all seven astronauts, a congressional aide said yesterday. The space agency's total budget would be $15.4 billion, $414 million more than Bush requested and $513 million over last year's total, with the shuttle program itself getting more than $3.2 billion. At the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, negotiators agreed over the weekend to add $6.1 billion to help the Pentagon defray personnel and operations costs in Afghanistan and other nations where it is confronting terrorists. Along with $3.9 billion the Senate added last month for intelligence operations, the new money essentially would fulfill the request President Bush made a year ago for a $10 billion military contingency fund that he would control. Congress ignored the initial proposal because it would have had little say over the money.
Negotiators met for 2 1/2 hours last night in a jam-packed room, steps from the Senate chamber, in hopes of resolving final disputes. But they broke up with the House refusing to approve $3.1 billion the Senate wants to help farmers. House lawmakers want more of the provision's funds directed to victims of the ongoing drought, and are refusing to pay for the money with cuts in most other programs in the overall bill. Aides said Senate majority leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, has told the White House that the agriculture package must be included for the overall bill to pass the Senate Democrats said there was not enough money for local law enforcement agencies and other domestic security programs, land conservation, education, and Head Start preschools for poor children. ''These cuts are unwise given the increased threat level under which we are all now living,'' said Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, top Democrat on the Appropriations panel. Underlining the spending pressures facing both parties, the White House has signed off on more than $10 billion over the $385 billion that Bush originally demanded as the bill's top price tag. The bill's emerging details were described by congressional aides and lobbyists on condition of anonymity. The roughly 1,100-page compromise bill would finance every domestic agency and pay for foreign aid for the federal budget year that began Oct. 1. Lawmakers already enacted two bills to provide $365.6 billion for defense for this year, and the administration is expected to request billions more in a few weeks. The rest of the $2.2 trillion federal budget covers Social Security and other benefits paid automatically. Congress failed to finish the spending package last fall after Bush demanded billions less than many lawmakers wanted, and House GOP leaders chose to avoid an election-season budget battle the president might have lost. Removing one obstacle, bargainers agreed to an estimated $49 billion over the next decade to increase Medicare reimbursements to doctors and some hospitals. Democrats failed to kill language backed by the timber industry to increase logging in Alaska's 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest and make it harder for environmentalists to block such activities. In another fight, bargainers dropped a provision sought by the airlines to make voluntary and unpaid the training its pilots and flight attendants are now required to take -- with pay -- in handling episodes of terrorism and other violent incidents aboard flights. The Association of Flight Attendants opposed the measure.
This story ran on page A4 of the Boston Globe on 2/11/2003.
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© Copyright 2003 New York Times Company |
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ASHINGTON -- House-Senate bargainers agreed yesterday to add NASA and defense money to a government-wide spending bill whose cost has surpassed $396 billion, but failed to complete a compromise when they deadlocked over aid to farmers.
