House Approves Spending Package to Avert Shutdown

In a final, weary push to adjourn the 104th Congress, the House on Saturday night approved a massive spending bill designed to avoid a repeat of last year’s budget wars and government shutdowns.

The vote was 370-37. Only 24 Republicans and 13 Democrats voted against the measure.

The $600-billion measure--a compromise agreed to early in the day by negotiators from the White House, Senate and House--would give President Clinton much of what he sought in additional funding for education, anti-terrorism measures and other domestic initiatives. At the same time, Republicans could claim continued progress on the containment of overall federal spending.

Negotiators also agreed to include in the budget package a landmark bill to crack down on illegal immigration, after Republicans decided to relax proposed restrictions on legal immigrants that Clinton opposed.

The omnibus budget measure was expected to go to the Senate for a vote on Monday. Senate Democrats said they may try to tinker with the bill through amendments, but they predicted that this would not keep the measure from going to the White House by midnight Monday, when the government technically runs out of money if a spending bill has not been signed.

Clinton on Saturday hailed the spirit of compromise that produced the overall agreement.

“It is good for America because it continues to move us toward a balanced budget while protecting, not violating, our values,” he said during a campaign rally in Rhode Island. “In the last three months, as the American people have made it clear that they have no intention of seeing our country torn apart and divided over a radical agenda, we have restored a measure of bipartisanship and working together in Washington. Look what happens when you abandon extremism in favor of working together.”

Democrats complained that reams of legislation were being sandwiched into one bill so sweeping that no lawmaker will actually know what he or she is voting on.

“That bill isn’t measured in pages,” said Rep. David R. Obey (R-Wis.), pointing to the huge stack of papers that contained the measure. “It’s measured in feet.”

Still, members of the minority party were clearly pleased with the concessions Republicans made. “We’ve seen a legislative retreat from the worst instincts of [the GOP] agenda,” said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.).

Republicans argued that whatever concessions they made to Clinton and the Democrats, the bill continues to build on their efforts to curb excessive government spending.

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“This completes our final step toward securing $53 billion in cumulative savings for the American taxpayer,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.), citing GOP estimates of how much money the party’s lawmakers have trimmed from appropriations bills during the two years they have controlled Congress.

But in this last round of talks, Republicans were indeed far more willing to compromise than anyone could have dreamed possible a year ago, when the GOP and the White House waged a budget struggle so titanic that the government shut down twice before the conservative congressional majority gave up trying to get Clinton to accept its formula for balancing the budget in seven years.

On Saturday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) acknowledged that the GOP tune had changed. “One of the lessons we learned is that you have got to find a way to work together to get things through the Senate,” he told reporters. “You have got to find a way to get the signature of the president if you want to get it done.”

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Republicans were more accommodating on the budget, in part, because they were clamoring to end the session and go home to campaign full time in this fall’s high-stakes elections. “It’s a good bill,” Livingston said of the compromise, “because it allows us to go home to our constituents.”

The way was cleared for action on the budget only after White House and congressional negotiators reached a compromise on the immigration measure. Clinton had threatened to veto the spending bill if it did not include additional concessions on the immigration bill already passed by the House. The White House objections were lifted after Republicans agreed to water down provisions that would have cut benefits to legal immigrants.

The budget compromise is embodied in the massive omnibus spending bill, which runs more than 2,000 pages. The measure is needed to fund much of the federal government after the current fiscal year ends Monday because Congress passed only seven of the 13 appropriations bills needed each year to operate the government.

The other six bills--which finance the departments of Defense, Interior, Labor, Education, Commerce, Justice, State and Health and Human Services, as well as dozens of other departments and agencies--are wrapped into the package.

Overall, the bill includes about $244 billion for the Pentagon and $346 billion for non-defense programs, including entitlement programs like Medicare.

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In negotiating the terms of the catchall bill, Republicans agreed to give Clinton the $6.5 billion in spending he sought to add to previously approved levels for education and training, environmental measures and other domestic initiatives. At Republicans’ insistence, the additional spending is matched with offsets in other areas, including reductions in proposed Pentagon spending, revenue from the auction of spots on the broadcast spectrum and fees from a fund that insures bank deposits.

The bill also includes $1.1 billion Clinton sought for anti-terrorism initiatives, $650 million for firefighting efforts in the West, $400 million to help victims of Hurricane Fran, $123 million for redeploying troops in Saudi Arabia and $8.8 billion for anti-drug efforts.

Because the spending bill is the last, biggest, must-pass measure of the 104th Congress, lawmakers scrambled to piggyback their pet projects and heartfelt legislative causes onto the giant package.

Among those that succeeded is a rider that would prohibit people convicted of child or spouse abuse from owning a gun. The bill also includes a long-debated plan to shore up the fund that insures deposits in the nation’s savings-and-loan institutions.

There is also money for a study of chemically “tagging” explosives so they can be traced. But in a victory for the National Rifle Assn., black and smokeless powder used by many antique-gun fanciers--and the chief ingredients of most pipe bombs--would be excluded.

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Negotiators also turned aside requests to wrap in a controversial measure to create and expand dozens of national parks, which included a proposal by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to establish a trust for the preservation and maintenance of the Presidio in San Francisco. However, the measure also included provisions opposed by Clinton, such as a plan to expand corporate sponsorship of national parks.

In a separate action to break the stalemate over the parks bill, the House on Saturday night approved, 404 to 4, a stripped-down version of the measure. That bill, which still includes the Presidio proposal, faces an uncertain future in the Senate, but an aide to Boxer said efforts to revive the parks legislation are ongoing.

The House also gave final congressional approval to a bill to combat the use and manufacture of the illicit drug methamphetamine. It calls for harsher penalties for unlawful manufacture and transport, and it would limit purchases of over-the-counter cold and allergy medications containing pseudoephedrine, which is being converted in illegal laboratories into methamphetamine.

Another measure sent to Clinton would impose tough penalties for stealing trade secrets for a foreign government or company.