Congress OKs Catchall Spending Bill

Congress approved and sent to President Reagan a $1.7-billion catchall spending bill Thursday designed to keep several government agencies running through the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

Earlier Thursday, the Senate reversed itself and voted to restore $55.6 million in non-competitive university research money that critics had labeled “pork-barrel science,” and lawmakers on both sides rejected a last-ditch effort to broaden a program of job retraining to include unemployed oil-field workers.

The measure, a compromise worked out after a week of private meetings between Senate and House negotiators, was said to be acceptable to Reagan.

Included in the bill was $5.3 billion to restore a flow of money to farmers, whose checks from the Commodity Credit Corp. had been held up since the agency ran out of money on June 3; $3.8 million to pay juries in federal civil trials, some of which have been delayed for lack of funds, and money to restore a series of cuts made under the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law.