Congress OKs Federal Spending Bill

WASHINGTON —  Acting more than four months after the start of the 2003 fiscal year, Congress on Thursday night sent to President Bush a spending bill that boosts funding for education and homeland defense.

But the fight over the $397.4-billion measure signaled the battle ahead as lawmakers prepare to take up Bush’s proposed 2004 tax cuts and budget.

The omnibus spending legislation, which grew to 3,000 pages and weighed 32 pounds, was approved, 338 to 83, in the House and, hours later, 76 to 20 in the Senate. A compilation of 11 bills that are usually approved separately, it will fund the government through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats objected that the Republican-drafted bill did not provide enough money to safeguard Americans from terrorist attacks.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, accused the White House of seeking to protect Americans “on a shoestring homeland security budget held together with duct tape.”

Republicans defended the bill, saying it would provide record levels of funding for education and anti-terrorist defenses, though they acknowledged that it had flaws.

The bill provides more money for upgrading computers at the FBI and for strengthening airplane cockpit doors, tightening security at seaports and borders and assisting the “first responders” -- local and state emergency personnel -- in preparing for an attack.

The bill boosts the NASA budget by $500 million, including $50 million for the investigation into the shuttle Columbia disaster. It provides $1.5 billion to implement voting reforms spurred by problems spotlighted in the 2000 presidential election in Florida. It also is packed with hundreds of projects in the home districts of lawmakers -- from $90,000 for the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Texas to $1 million for a DNA bear sampling study in Montana.

Bush, who has sought to clamp down on domestic spending in the face of growing budget deficits and unpredictable costs from a possible U.S. war against Iraq, said in a statement that he looks forward “to signing this legislation and to continuing a course of fiscal discipline.”

Passage of the measure ended a months-long budget stalemate that began last year when the House and the Senate, controlled by different parties, could agree only on two spending bills for the Pentagon.

The battle ended this week when Republicans, now in control of both chambers and itching to move on to other issues, such as the president’s proposed tax cuts, went behind closed doors and drafted a bill. Democrats complained bitterly about the process, and many said they didn’t even know what was in the bill when they voted on it.

Democrats objected to a $200-million cut in land conservation and to a provision that could allow more logging in national forests. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said that the timber provision would lead to the “ruination of our national forests,” voted against the bill.

“Ever so quietly, but ever so quickly, the Republicans are rolling back more than 30 years of environmental progress,” complained House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who -- along with a majority of Democrats in both houses -- nonetheless voted in favor.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she voted for the bill “not because I agree with everything in it, but because the alternative is much worse.”

“If we do not pass this bill, the remainder of the fiscal year will be funded at the same level as last year,” she said. Still, Feinstein said, a reduction in federal aid to states that incarcerate illegal immigrants would cost California $100 million this year.

Among the California projects included in the bill are $12 million for a project to deepen the Los Angeles Harbor channel to permit larger container ships to enter the port; $4 million for extending a rail line from downtown Los Angeles to the city’s Eastside and $3.3 million to remove thousands of bug-infested dead trees that pose a fire risk in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California.