# Again Vets Will Suffer Due To Lack Of $



## Rocky (Dec 7, 2006)

*A last-gasp attempt by retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.)
to pass a fiscal 2007 military quality of life and Veterans Affairs spending
bill fizzled yesterday as Senate appropriators said the deal was too little,
too late.

At press time, lawmakers had not fully closed the door on a deal, but a
senior GOP aide said, "It doesn't look like it's coming together."

Meanwhile, the prospects for avoiding a potential shortfall in veterans'
medical care funding by including some sort of increase in a continuing
resolution that would otherwise keep the government running with no spending
increases until Feb. 15 also seemed remote.

A senior Senate GOP leadership aide said Tuesday that while Frist was not
ruling out including a fix in the CR - along with several other technical
matters needed to ensure that federal programs are fully funded - it
appeared at press time that the shortfall would continue.

"They'll [likely] have to clean up this mess" next year, the aide said,
blaming faulty appropriations numbers from the Bush administration for the
nearly $1.1 billion shortfall.

A Senate GOP aide familiar with the issue said House GOP appropriators were
strongly resisting a move to boost veterans' medical care spending in the
CR, but that Senate appropriators were pressing the White House to send up a
request this week "so we could have some backing."

But the prospects for a new veterans spending bill appeared to die
yesterday, as it became ever more certain that all nine remaining fiscal
2007 spending bills would have to be taken up next year instead.

Frist agreed Monday night to a series of demands by conservative GOP
lawmakers in an attempt to make sure that veterans' health care and other
issues don't suffer from a lack of funds under the CR.

But appropriators said they could not reconcile the House and Senate
versions in time to pass the bill along with the CR by the end of this week,
when Congress is expected to adjourn for the year.

"Unfortunately, we may not get this thing done," said Sen. Jim DeMint
(R-S.C.), one of the conservatives who had balked for weeks at appointing
Senate conferees to the veterans bill for fear it would be used as a vehicle
to create a mammoth omnibus spending bill laden with the costly targeted
spending provisions known as earmarks.

DeMint, along with GOP Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and James Inhofe (Okla.),
sent Frist a letter Monday outlining their conditions for lifting their
blockade of the veterans spending bill. Specifically, they wanted assurances
that, among other things, the measure would not be used to craft an omnibus,
that it would include only items authorized by current law or requested by
the president and that it would not exceed spending limits set earlier this
year.

Frist agreed to their demands, but when he approached appropriators about
the deal Tuesday, they told him it was unworkable. According to the
leadership aide, the objections were less about the substance of the deal
and more about process.

"We're not saying no to the deal. We're just saying it's unreasonable to
think there's enough time to do it," said Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for
outgoing Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). "You can't
conference a bill in three days. It's a nice gesture. It's just too late."

Manley added that the conservatives previously had rejected promises by
Cochran to accede to their demands. "What's in this deal are the things that
we've been offering for weeks," she said.

But DeMint took issue with that, saying, "We have not been able to get that
agreement from appropriators. We're not going to give them carte blanche
because we'll be embarrassed if we do."

The appropriators' reaction to the proposed deal only made conservatives
more certain that they had been right to block the bill in the first place.

One Senate GOP aide sympathetic to the conservatives' point of view said,
"Conservatives' fears were proven correct as we learned today that
appropriators never had an interest in a bill that wouldn't be an omnibus.
Given the chance to make good on their claim that they'd be okay without an
omnibus, they balked."

But Manley said the time to compromise on the veterans spending bill was
Nov. 14, when the bill passed the Senate. Had DeMint, Coburn and Inhofe
allowed the bill to move into a House-Senate conference committee, it and
"easily a handful of other bills" would have been ready for final passage
this week.

If that had happened, Manley said, many more agencies would not have to
operate under a CR that keeps funding flat for another two and a half
months.

Despite professing their general support for passing a new veterans spending
bill, conservatives hailed the decision to pass only a CR until February by
noting how many earmarks they prevented from becoming law.

"Senate conservatives have effectively blocked over 10,000 earmarks and are
ready to work with Democrats (or hold them accountable when necessary) to
continue this progress next year," DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton wrote in
an e-mail.

Denton added that Congress passed 12,852 earmarks in the fiscal 2006
spending bills and that by preventing "an earmark-laden omnibus bill, Senate
conservatives have effectively cut the number by 80 percent, down to 2,600
earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste." *


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