by Congressional Quarterly

ouse Democratic leaders will try again next week to move a war supplemental spending package that their own conservative Blue Dogs have stalled. The Senate plans to finish an overhaul of the federal flood insurance program, and both chambers may take final action on a massive new five-year farm bill that has drawn sharp criticism from the White House. The war spending package would provide enough money to keep military operations going in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring. But the measure stalled in the House this week because it carries a major expansion of GI Bill education benefits for veterans — spending that would continue long after the period covered by the bill. The White House has threatened to veto the legislation if the benefit expansion remains in it, and members of the Blue Dog Coalition are demanding that Democratic leaders offset the new spending with cuts elsewhere. Party leaders, in turn, are telling the Blue Dogs to come up with suggested offsets. Veterans’ groups and liberal Democrats were irked by the Blue Dogs’ stance. The delay caused by the Blue Dogs provoked a backlash by veterans’ groups as well as several members of the liberal Out of Iraq and Progressive caucuses Thursday, who demanded that the supplemental bill be brought to the floor in its original form. “How can the Blue Dog Coalition possibly say that an expansion of education benefits is too costly when their votes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight in Iraq violate the same pay-as-you-go rules they claim to so deeply respect? It’s an inconsistent logic,” said Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey , D-N.Y. Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd , D-W.Va., on Thursday abruptly postponed his panel’s scheduled markup of its war supplemental bill until May 15 after the House said it wouldn’t act until next week. But Byrd warned, “My patience is growing thin.”

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   by Congressional Quarterly

The Senate Appropriations Committee postponed its scheduled Thursday markup of this year’s war supplemental spending bill, after the House delayed floor consideration of the legislation until next week. “In view of House inaction on the legislation this week, I have very reluctantly agreed to the request of the House and Senate Democratic leadership to postpone the Senate Appropriations Committee scheduled mark-up ... until next Thursday, May 15,” Chairman Robert C. Byrd , D-W.Va., said in a statement. “My patience is growing thin. I am putting my colleagues in both the House and Senate on notice that whether the House acts or not next week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will move forward with a markup,” Byrd added. House Democratic leaders refused to hold an Appropriations Committee markup of their version of the bill, excluding Republicans from a role in drafting the package and infuriating the minority. But their tactic may have caused them more pain than it avoided. House Republicans have dramatically slowed floor action on other legislation all week through repeated parliamentary votes designed to protest the Democrats’ move. And conservative Democrats’ resistance to new mandatory spending that House leaders included in their version of the supplemental threatened to sink the measure. President Bush has vowed to veto any bill that exceeds his funding requests — $108.1 billion in war funds for the remainder of fiscal 2008, plus $70 billion in fiscal 2009 for the war and $5.8 billion for Gulf Coast levee reconstruction in fiscal 2009. House Democratic leaders assembled a bill that stayed within Bush’s combined topline of $183.8 billion, although their calculations did not include the cost of a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and a major expansion of education benefits for veterans.

Bush Says He Would Veto House Bill Aimed at Easing Mortgage Crisis

May 7, 2008

   by Congressional Quarterly

President Bush on Wednesday underscored his threat to veto major legislation designed to address the housing and mortgage crisis, even as the House was working to pass the measure later in the day. After meeting with the House Republican Conference, Bush said, “I will veto the bill that’s moving through the House today if it makes it to my desk, and I urge members on both sides of the aisle to focus on a good piece of legislation that is being sponsored by Republican members.” The package before the House combines several major bills, including a regulatory overhaul of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and a modernization of the Federal Housing Administration. The White House has long sought both of those measures. But Bush opposes a cornerstone of the package that would provide $300 billion in new authority for the FHA to insure refinanced loans for struggling home owners, asserting that it would “reward speculators and lenders.” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., rebutted that charge. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “Our housing rescue bill, which has attracted bipartisan support, specifically excludes speculators, investors, and second homes, and requires lenders to take losses.” Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank , D-Mass., who has shepherded the package to the floor, said the White House has “decided to stop governing . . . and not allow the [Democratic] Congress to claim anything constructive.” The White House backs two elements of the House package — the Fannie and Freddie Mac regulatory overhaul and FHA modernization. But it opposes Frank’s plan to restore liquidity to the mortgage market and help struggling homeowners by allowing the FHA to insure refinanced mortgages if lenders accept a write-down to reflect reduced current market values. Frank had hoped to deliver a housing package to Bush by July 4. But the two chambers will have to resolve their differences before then, and the veto threat could make it harder to build consensus in the Senate.

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