Budget May Hinge on Drought Aid

Four months late, congressional negotiators neared agreement Monday night on a $396-billion-plus spending bill that would fund much of the government for the current fiscal year.

But a final agreement faced a last-minute hitch over a Senate demand, opposed by the House, to include billions of dollars in emergency aid for drought-stricken farmers and ranchers.

“There will be no bill unless there is a drought provision,” Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said before adjourning the negotiating session in an effort to reach a compromise.

His counterpart in the House, Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young (R-Fla.), said the House was firmly opposed to the across-the-board cuts in other domestic programs that would be required to fund $3.1 billion in drought assistance.

And, Young said, the bill cannot include the drought aid without cuts, or it will face a threatened presidential veto.

The Bush administration has sought to restrain nondefense spending, citing the burgeoning federal budget deficit, estimated at more than $300 billion this year, and new costs for defense at home and abroad.

The dispute over the drought aid threatened to unravel a near-agreement on the spending bill for the 2003 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

Of the 13 annual bills that provide for the government’s discretionary spending, only two -- one for the Pentagon, the other for military construction -- became law last year.

Negotiators have lumped together the remaining 11 bills into an omnibus spending package that totals more than 1,000 pages.

Reflecting the priorities of the new Republican-controlled Congress, the bill includes provisions bitterly opposed by environmentalists, such as easing curbs on logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and other forests. Another provision would allow the Forest Service to contract with private companies for additional forest thinning, a step the administration has urged to prevent wildfires.

During the late-night meeting in a packed room in the Capitol, Democrats complained that the bill shortchanges such programs as homeland security, land conservation and the Head Start preschool program for poor children. The Department of Interior budget, they said, would drop more than $200 million below the 2002 level.

“These cuts are unwise, given the increased threat level under which we are all now living,” said Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The bill includes an across-the-board cut in nondefense programs, estimated to be slightly less than 1%, to free up money for education -- more than President Bush requested -- and for African famine relief.

Negotiators provided NASA with $50 million to investigate the space shuttle Columbia accident that killed seven astronauts.

Also included were $6 billion for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and about $4 billion for intelligence operations.

In an appeal to his colleagues to finish work on the long-overdue spending bill, Young said, “If we don’t finish our ’03 budget, we’re not going to look too good out on the street.”

Bush already has announced his preliminary budget for the 2004 fiscal year.

One possible compromise for the 2003 legislation is for the drought aid to be included in a supplemental spending bill, expected to be introduced late this year. Stevens has said that if an agreement cannot be reached before the Presidents Day recess, Congress should freeze spending for the rest of the year at 2002 levels.