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Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 07:16:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: [log in to unmask] (Nita Andres)
Subject: Washington Fax story
To: [log in to unmask]
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>

Below is the text of a Washington Fax news story. It has been forwarded to you by
Nita Andres ([log in to unmask]) on Thursday, October 14, 1999 at 07:16:35
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WASHINGTON FAX   October 14, 1999


House L/HHS bill won't go to the floor this week, if at all

Senate and House versions may be conferenced for an omnibus bill


The House Republican leadership reportedly still is seeking a strategy that will allow it to complete work on an unwieldy domestic spending bill that includes funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with House floor action unlikely to occur this week.

Last week, the Senate approved by a vote of 75-23 its version of the FY 2000 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (L/HHS) funding measure. The Senate bill includes a $2 billion increase for NIH, providing the agency with an FY 2000 budget of $17.6 billion.

There were no surprises for biomedical research in the Senate bill. As expected, there were no attempts to add language that would explicitly block NIH from conducting research with embryonic stem cells.

(Perhaps the only unexpected action came when Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-HI, added an amendment to the bill that names not just a federal building--which is common--but an entire government agency after a Senator. Under Inouye's amendment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be designated the Thomas Harkin Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a tribute to biomedical research and public health champion Sen. Tom Harkin, D-IA.)

Meanwhile, House leaders have been either unwilling or unable to adopt the tactics the Senate employed to bring enough money to its bill to make it politically palatable to a majority of members.

The House version--which contains a $1.35 billion boost for NIH--still needs at least an $8 billion infusion just to provide what Republicans say they need to keep from dipping into the Social Security portion of the FY 2000 budget surplus. Congressional Democrats and President Clinton insist they need considerably more, both to avoid eating into excess Social Security revenues and to craft a bill that stands a chance of White House approval. Specifically, "gutting" of education programs has been mentioned as a veto issue.

A plan adopted by the House Appropriations Committee to get an additional $8 billion through changes in the Earned Income Tax Credit was widely considered dead on arrival when, about an hour before it was considered by the panel, it was publicly dismissed by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush as an attack on the poor. Meanwhile, Rep. Bill Young, R-FL, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that a plan floated last week to deal with the shortfall by cutting all discretionary spending "across the board" is "not workable." (see Washington Fax 10/5/99)

"I get the feeling that it does not have the support this week that it had last week," Young said in an interview.

At a press conference Tuesday, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-TX, said Republicans would be meeting this week to "find out where they are" on the L/HHS bill.

No one in the Republican leadership is backing off the party line that the L/HHS bill will be completed as a stand-alone item, rather than being rolled into a catchall omnibus bill. However, a workable plan has yet to emerge that would avoid the omnibus scenario.

Still, NIH supporters inside and outside Congress reportedly are still upbeat and believe that, for NIH, the final outcome will be a positive one, even though there is little clue as to what the next steps will be. They note that, with Congress in possession of a Senate-passed bill and a measure approved by the House Appropriations Committee, there exists at least the basis for meaningful negotiations between the chambers. Such talks, sources say, could produce legislation that could either be rolled into an omnibus bill or attached to another appropriations measure.

The continuing resolution or CR approved to keep the federal government running at the end of the fiscal year September 29 expires next Thursday. So, at the least, another short-term CR almost certainly will be required just to keep the government open.

Armey said Republicans knew at the beginning of the term that, with their slim margin in the House, leadership "was going to be tough."

"But we just didn't know the chapter and verse of it," he said.

--Matthew Davis

The status of all FY 2000 appropriations bills and the full text of the measures, including the Senate and House L/HHS bills and reports, is available through the Library of Congress at

[http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/legislative/appover.html].


(C) 1998 WASHINGTON FAX, an established news and information service
specializing in science policy [http://www.washingtonfax.com]. 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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