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This comes from the Washington Fax service. They said I could quote it
if they are given credit and I include a way that you can get a tempory
subscription to try it out. See bottom of post. It is nice to know some
of what is going on, Nita

> "Delicately hinged House L/HHS funding bill heads for floor debate; Senate
>
> bill may finish today
>
>
>
>
> Legislation that would provide a $1.35 billion increase for the National
> Institutes of Health (NIH) was approved Thursday evening by the House
> Appropriations Committee, though it was so laden with controversy that
> doubts loomed about whether it will survive on the House floor.
>
> Meanwhile, the Senate was hoping to complete work Thursday night or Friday
> on its version of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and
> Related Agencies (L/HHS) FY 2000 spending bill, which would give NIH a $2
> billion boost.
>
> One contentious issue was at least temporarily neutralized when Rep. Jay
> Dickey, R-AR, withdrew an amendment from the House bill that would have
> blocked NIH from following through with plans to fund embryonic stem cell
> research.
>
> Dickey had prepared an amendment that would have restricted publicly funded
> stem cell research to work with cells derived from aborted fetuses. Dickey
> believes spending public money on embryonic stem cell experiments--as NIH
> plans to do--would violate a law he co-authored that forbids federal
> funding for research with human embryos. Research with aborted fetuses is
> already permissible.
>
> Sources said Dickey withdrew his amendment late Wednesday at the request of
> House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-TX. DeLay reportedly told GOP colleagues
> that the L/HHS bill--which Democrats view as slighting education and worker
> training initiatives--did not need any more controversy.
>
> But Dickey indicated Thursday he wasn't ready to completely abandon his
> effort. "If the bill is vetoed and comes back (to the House), we'll do it
> then," Dickey said in response to a reporter's question.
>
> The more immediate question was whether the House L/HHS bill can survive on
> the House floor. In addition to disagreements over spending priorities,
> Democrats also have criticized Republicans for resorting to a variety of
> accounting mechanisms to funnel more money into the bill, rather than
> simply lifting the caps on federal spending and acknowledging that they
> will need some of the federal budget surplus generated by Social Security
> revenues to deal with FY 2000 appropriations.
>
> Republicans added to that controversy Thursday when the Appropriations
> Committee, with no Democratic support, funneled $8 billion to the
> legislation through an offset that would involve paying out a popular tax
> credit for low-income families in monthly installments, rather than as a
> lump sum.
>
> The provision, which affects the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC),
> threatened to destabilize the entire bill as congressional Democrats and
> President Clinton blasted the offset, key Senate Republicans criticized it
> and Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush said the plan was
> tantamount to "balancing the budget on the backs of the poor."
>
> Rep. David Obey, D-WI, the committee's senior Democrat, said the L/HHS
> legislation is "as bad a bill as this committee has ever produced."
>
> "It should not be reported," he said in a prepared statement. "It should be
> defeated and placed in a file cabinet and hidden deep in the bowels of the
> capitol, and we should collectively agree to deny that this committee ever
> considered such legislation."
>
> But Rep. John Porter, R-IL, the bill's chief author and the chair of the
> Appropriations L/HHS subcommittee, said that despite its imperfections, the
> legislation is far better than the alternative, which was to let L/HHS
> issues be resolved in back-room negotiations with the White House.
>
> Porter said a failure to produce the L/HHS bill--whose fate has been
> imperiled by a lack of funding--"would simply be an affront" to Congress's
> constitutional duty to draft appropriations legislation.
>
> "I intend to do everything I can to send this bill through the entire
> process," he said.
>
> A source close to the deliberations said that if the committee completes
> work on the bill, it won't be clear whether it will go to the House floor
> until late next week.
>
> This source noted that DeLay seemed to strike a chord with House
> Republicans Wednesday when he insisted that their strongest position
> involves sending President Clinton individual bills and, if they're vetoed,
> dealing with them separately, rather than constructing an omnibus bill. But
> according to this source, the growing controversy surrounding the EITC
> language could render that solidarity fleeting."
>
> I have a trial subscription and like it so far.Nita
>
> Apply for a
> free trial subscription at [http://www.washingtonfax.com/auto-trial.htm],
> or e-mail [[log in to unmask]].
>
>
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