Senate Raises Terror Spending Stakes
The Senate approved an anti-terrorism bill early Friday after hoisting its cost beyond $31.5 billion in a challenge to a White House that has threatened to veto the package as too expensive.
The Democratic-controlled Senate's 71-22 vote, which ended after midnight, sets up a showdown with President Bush, who sent Congress a $27.1 billion proposal in March.
Lying ahead are negotiations with the Republican-led House, which adopted a $29 billion version of the measure two weeks ago.
With November's elections for congressional control looming ever closer, those talks will give both sides their latest chance to turn their differences over the war on terror to their political advantage — and perhaps give Mr. Bush the chance to cast his first veto as president.
"You can tell the people at the local level that their safety doesn't matter," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the bill's lead author, told Republicans who tried unsuccessfully to pluck some items out of the legislation.
Sens. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and John McCain, R-Ariz., lost several attempts to cut projects they said did not belong in anti-terror legislation.
The Senate voted 65-31 to retain language providing $2.5 million for mapping Hawaiian coral reefs. And by 66-30, it kept $2 million in to help the Smithsonian Institution plan a storage facility for its animal specimens, currently stored on the Washington Mall near the Capitol, preserved in 730,000 gallons of flammable alcohol.
"Almost anything can be deemed to be an emergency. Where do you draw the line," asked Gramm.
In a final flurry, tempers seemed near the breaking point as the Senate accepted about 40 amendments but dropped scores of others over angry protests.
"You can smile if you like, but there's nothing to smile about," a furious Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said to McCain after he blocked a Domenici amendment that would have helped small aircraft manufacturers.
During the debate:
- Senators voted 79-14 for a proposal by Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Jesse Helms, R-N.C., to double to $200 million the bill's funds for fighting AIDS overseas. The two had earlier wanted $500 million but trimmed their plan after Frist negotiated with the White House and others. A Democratic effort to boost the total to $500 million was rejected 49-46.
- The Senate voted 75-19 to forbid U.S. cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal, a permanent court that starts operations next month and has been opposed by the president. The House has approved a nearly identical ban.
- Gramm blocked inclusion of a deal reached among some top bipartisan senators that would have set a cap on next year's spending and set procedures for enforcing that limit. The figure - which excludes benefits such as Social Security — was $768 billion, $9 billion more than the president proposed and $29 billion higher than is to be spent this year. Many lawmakers want such an agreement because partisan fights have blocked passage of a congressional budget this year that would limit spending. But Gramm and other conservatives want to hold out for a lower figure.
But that plan was abandoned after Mr. Bush used Thursday to announce his proposal to merge federal anti-terror efforts into a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security and declared that America was waging "a titanic struggle against terror."
Nearly half the bill is for the Pentagon and intelligence programs. The rest is mostly for airport security, the FBI and other domestic security efforts; rebuilding New York and helping people and businesses there hurt by the Sept. 11 devastation; helping Afghanistan and other U.S. allies.
But the measure would help local interests too. It has $10 million for Texas farmers and ranchers hurt by a water dispute with Mexico; $500,000 to study avian Newcastle disease in Athens, Ga.; and $73 million for relief from floods in Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois, Michigan and Kentucky.
The spending is for the remaining months of the federal budget year that ends Sept. 30.