Congress Passes a Final Budget Hailed by Clinton

By NICK ANDERSON

Dec. 16, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

More than two months behind schedule, the curtain fell on the 106th Congress on Friday as lawmakers resoundingly approved a final budget package that includes major increases in education spending, expanded Medicare payments for health care providers and modest tax breaks for poor communities.

President Clinton, who like Congress was bargaining as a lame duck, fought hard to win an 18% boost in education spending for fiscal 2001. Now funded at $42 billion, the Education Department budget has risen by 76% since Clinton took office almost eight years ago.

The new funding will expand federal initiatives in class-size reduction, school renovation, education for special-needs students and grants for poor college students.

Disagreements over these and other issues first caused Congress to fail to complete a budget accord by Oct. 1, the start of the 2001 fiscal year. Then, as the Nov. 7 election approached, lawmakers decided to schedule the lame-duck session.

Clinton, who has waged several bitter budget battles with Republicans since the GOP took over Congress six years ago, hailed Friday’s accord and is expected to sign the $1.8-trillion measure within a week.

“It is a budget that is fiscally responsible, pays down the debt and makes vital investments in our nation’s future,” Clinton said. “In education, health care and community renewal, this budget provides more opportunity for more Americans than ever before.”

Clinton also praised immigration reforms included in the package, though he had sought more sweeping relief. The provisions included in the agreement will help some immigrants who have lived in the United States for many years get green cards certifying permanent residence and help keep some immigrant families together.

Added to the final legislation was a set of tax breaks worth $25 billion over 10 years to spur economic development and housing construction in certain low-income communities. One provision will eliminate capital gains taxes on some business transactions in these communities.

The same initiative also will lift restrictions on federal support for religious organizations that fight drug and alcohol abuse.

The Community Renewal and New Markets Act was pushed jointly by Clinton and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). It was a rare instance of cooperation in a legislative year marked by partisan acrimony--as well as a rare occasion when a Republican-backed tax cut was not blocked by the president’s veto pen.

In addition, health care providers who have been clamoring for relief from cutbacks imposed in 1997 won $35 billion in additional reimbursements over the next five years. The Medicare measure had drawn little public attention but was the subject of fierce lobbying by hospitals, health maintenance organizations and others.

Lawmakers initially returned to Washington for the lame-duck session in mid-November. But the unexpected dispute over the presidential election stalled action on Capitol Hill. For weeks, lawmakers have been unable to talk about much besides who was winning in Florida.

The emergence this week of Republican George W. Bush as the president-elect hastened the drive to end budget talks. Bipartisanship became, for the moment, the watchword of the Capitol.

“This week, I am happy to say that the peace of the holiday season has brought finality to the presidential elections and to the work of the 106th Congress,” Hastert said.

But critics have charged that the 106th, which began in January 1999 with the high drama of the Senate impeachment trial of Clinton, left a legacy of unfinished business. Democrats complained that Congress failed to pass a minimum wage increase, managed-care reform and new gun control measures.

Republicans countered that bi-partisan majorities approved major tax legislation, including measures to reduce taxes for married couples and heirs. The GOP leaders noted that these measures were thwarted by Clinton vetoes.

Seemingly popular measures to expand retirement savings tax incentives and repeal an excise tax on telephone service also failed to become part of the final budget package.

The White House and top congressional Republicans signed off on Friday’s spending and tax package after a final frenzy of deal-making on local issues typical of the end of a congressional session.

For example, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) won $30 million in economic assistance and other measures for fisheries hurt by newly imposed environmental restrictions protecting the endangered Steller sea lion. For several hours Friday, Stevens threatened to delay action on the overall budget accord until the White House agreed to compromise.

These and other final pieces of the long-overdue $1.8-trillion federal budget came together only after Congress had passed 20 stopgap spending measures to keep federal agencies open since Oct. 1.

Many Lawmakers Skip the Votes

The final bill--which includes a total of $127 billion in discretionary spending for the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services, the Treasury and other executive and legislative agencies--was approved by the House on a 292-60 vote. The Senate later approved it by voice vote. Seventy-nine House members and many senators skipped the votes.

Republicans and Democrats alike claimed that in the budget accord they had promoted fiscal discipline while investing in key social priorities. But, reflecting their philosophical differences, the two parties touted different parts of the legislation.

The GOP leadership trumpeted a policy that allocates $250 billion toward paying off the national debt, or 93% of the projected $268-billion surplus. Republicans also said that they had restrained the Democratic urge to spend--even though bipartisan majorities in recent months have voted for one bill after another that, in sum, broke the $600-billion goal Congress had set on discretionary spending by $34 billion.

Democrats, on the other hand, praised funding for teacher hiring ($1.6 billion, up from $1.3 billion the year before) and school repairs (a new $1.2-billion program) as a capstone to Clinton’s presidency.

“We’ve proven that, when we get into serious negotiations, we can produce good results for the country,” said Jack Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Some See Surplus Being Squandered

Fiscal conservatives, stampeded by a wide bipartisan majority eager to end the legislative year, denounced the spending package.

“Frankly we’re squandering too much of the budget surplus that could be used for other purposes,” said Rep. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.).

Toomey and others also complained that lawmakers did not know, and had not read, what they were voting on. The final bill, H.R. 4577, was 10 inches thick and hundreds of pages long.

But such complaints were drowned out as lawmakers made no attempt to conceal their haste to leave Washington. Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, captured the mood as he read a poem with a holiday theme. “Our job here is done. Now let’s clear the hall,” Young told the House. “Let’s vote and then dash away, dash away all.”

Despite the concessions Clinton won from Republicans to ease some aspects of immigration law, many Democrats were disappointed that Congress failed to do more on this front.

One failed proposal would have granted a “mini-amnesty” to as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants who entered the country before 1986. Another would have helped hundreds of thousands of others from Central America and Haiti gain permanent residency.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills), who tried to win passage of a measure to help illegal immigrants who are migrant farm workers apply for amnesty, gave Congress poor marks.

“Huge numbers of issues were left unattended to,” Berman said. “Opportunities for compromise were passed up, and Congress does not leave here standing tall.”

Congress was able to settle one contentious issue revolving around Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, HMOs and other health care providers. They had absorbed unexpectedly large cutbacks in government payments as a result of the 1997 balanced-budget law. Medicare and Medicaid are the government health insurance programs for the elderly, poor and disabled.

The newly approved deal included an additional $35 billion for health care providers over the next five years. Hospitals got $12 billion, HMOs got $11 billion and home health care agencies received $2 billion.

The remainder was divided between other providers, and about $5 billion was set aside to defray costs to Medicare beneficiaries. They will pay reduced co-payments for outpatient hospital treatments and get more generous coverage of certain preventive benefits, including glaucoma screening and nutrition therapy.

Left out of the bill was a provision that would have helped low-income, legal immigrant women and their children get health care coverage. The coverage was a priority for the Clinton administration and a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats, but was opposed by Republican senators.

In the House vote on the final budget deal, 24 members of the California delegation voted for it while 20 were absent. Seven voted against it: Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), Wally Herger (R-Marysville), Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), George P. Radanovich (R-Mariposa), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and Pete Stark (D-Hayward).

Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

New Federal Budget Highlights

Total budget (including mandatory spending for programs such as Social Security and Medicare)

FISCAL YEAR 2000: $1.78 trillion

FISCAL YEAR 2001: $1.80 trillion

Note: Fistcal year 2001 began Oct. 1, 2000.

Key Spending

Discretionary programs only

Labor-Health-Education

PERCENT INCREASE: 14%

FISCAL 2000: $95.7 billion