Bush, Congress Agree On Spending
The Bush administration and congressional leaders have agreed to a $686 billion total for next year's spending bills, both sides said Friday. The amount is $25 billion more than President Bush proposed at the beginning of the year.
The agreement reflects a widespread desire for Congress to complete its routine work quickly in an environment dominated by the response to the terrorist attacks. It follows two weeks of intermittent talks between White House officials and top lawmakers.
"On the funding level, an agreement has been reached," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
Tom Gavin, spokesman for Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, confirmed a general agreement on spending to total $686 billion.
Last spring, Mr. Bush had proposed limiting 2002 spending to $661 billion, a 4 percent increase over this year's total that he said reflected a need to limit the growth of government.
But he said that excluded any additional increases he might seek for defense. He later requested an extra $18 billion for the military, which gained virtually universal support after the Sept. 11 strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Besides the defense increase, lawmakers from both parties have been pressing for an additional $4 billion for education, plus nearly $3 billion extra for responding to recent natural disasters.
In discussions this week, administration officials had indicated they could accept the additional money, participants had said.
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Democrats, eager to prevent the White House and Republicans from using the extra spending against them as a campaign issue, had been insisting that the administration request the money in writing. The status of that demand was unclear early Friday.
The year's spending total is expected to ultimately rise by tens of billions of dollars, because extra money is certain to be approved for the military, intelligence operations, security at airports, economic recovery, and other items relating to the fallout from the deadly terrorist attacks.
Congress has yet to complete any of the 13 annual spending bills for fiscal 2002, which begins on Monday. Mr. Bush and lawmakers have already enacted legislation keeping federal agencies open through Oct. 16 while work on the bills proceeds.
The spending bills cover one-third of the near $2 trillion federal budget. The rest of the money is spent for automatically paid benefits like Medicare, Social Security and interest paid to holders of federal debt.
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