Omnibus bill’s hidden item: a Democratic rift

On Tuesday, Congress passed the spending bill to keep the government running - 160 days late, and not without some unusual friction between House and Senate leaders.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer/ March 11, 2009 edition

Washington

Congress’s passage Tuesday night of a $410 billion bill to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2009 wraps up President Bush’s rancorous last year with a Democrat-controlled Congress.

But the omnibus spending package – 160 days overdue – also highlights unexpected rifts between Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, hinting at an unresolved power play already seeping into the next budget cycle.

Last year, Congress delayed voting on 9 of 12 spending bills, thinking it would be easier to reach a consensus this year – with Democrats now holding a larger majority in both houses of Congress.

Yet it remained a tough slog for the bill, which has been criticized as filled with pork. Along with some 8,500 member projects, the bill raises spending for many agencies some 10 percent above 2008 levels.

In an unusual move, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last Thursday said that she would not accept any changes or amendments to the omnibus bill that passed in the House on Feb. 25.

This was in response to the clout of three GOP senators, whose votes were critical to get to the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster on last month’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill last month. Along with a handful of Democrat centrists, they forced significant changes in the House version of the bill.

This was, in some ways, typical. The Senate often forces the House to accept the Senate’s version of a bill. But on the omnibus bill, Representative Pelosi reversed Congress’s historic pecking order – and Senate majority leader Harry Reid with apparent reluctance permitted it.

As the Senate debated whether to change the House bill and eliminate an automatic pay raise for Congress, Senator Reid cautioned that the House would not accept any amendments from the Senate: “There aren’t going to be any limits on this bill that I can get through the House,” he said.

The moment marked a sharp break with tradition. “It’s hard to think of a comparable moment like this,” says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. “The tension between the two chambers is becoming very strong, especially the Pelosi-Reid rivalry.”

It is especially striking that the rift has emerged as early as the first two big bills on the agenda, he adds.

Republicans also proposed amendments to cut controversial member projects, including earmarks to 14 clients of a lobbying firm under federal investigation for making campaign donations in exchange for political favors for the group’s clients. The amendment failed 43 to 52.

“I went after as many Republican earmarks as I did Democratic ones,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, who sponsored that and other anti-earmark amendments. He is urging President Obama to veto the bill.

“Delaying the fight on earmarks is going to make it harder for him to win,” he says. “He has no power on earmarks other than the veto pen and his popularity. Why not have the fight now, when he has the American people backing him.

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/03/11/omnibus-bills-hidden-item-a-democratic-rift/