WASHINGTON — Conservative flashpoint issues from abortion and abstinence education to President Barack Obama's health care law are the biggest obstacles to Congress completing a massive year-end spending bill next week that would keep the government running through next September.
Going into end-game negotiations this weekend on the $900-plus billion bill, Republicans expect to lose on most of the policy provisions, or "riders," they added to House versions of the must-do spending measures. But the White House and Democrats are poised to make concessions on some environmental rules, wetlands regulations and, in all likelihood, on continuing a ban on government-funded abortions in the nation's capital city.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]
"We're meeting heavy resistance from the White House and Democrats in the Senate," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., who is pressing for provisions to help the coal industry. "So, we'll get as many as we possibly can."
Among most popular targets for Republicans are environmental regulations they say hamper the economy, such as proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules on coal ash, large-scale discharges of hot water and greenhouse gases from electric power plants, and emissions from cement plants and oil refineries.
If past is prologue, most of the issues will end up on the chopping block. That's what happened last spring during negotiations on a spending bill for the budget year that ended in September.
"There's a lot of opposition to these and they know they need Democratic votes in the House to pass it," said Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. "So we have made this very clear to the other side. ... If you expect our votes you've got to get rid of the controversial riders."
But some riders will be needed to win GOP support for the measure in votes next week. And many of the provisions are important to powerful members of the appropriations panel in both parties.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the economy.]
"We don't want to be wholly inflexible," said Rep. James Moran of Virginia, top Democrat on the spending panel responsible for the EPA's budget. That measure is studded with riders.
"Virtually every rule the EPA has come up with, they're trying to come up with a rider to stop it," said Scott Slesinger, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The roster of environmental riders is indeed lengthy.
For coal interests, there is a rider to block clean water rules opposed by mining companies that blast the tops off mountains as well as a rider to block proposed labor rules to limit miners' exposure to coal dust, which causes black-lung disease. Electric utilities would benefit from delays of rules on traditional air pollution and emissions of carbon dioxide. Painting contractors would benefit from a delay in a 2008 rule that requires them to be certified by the EPA in order to remove lead paint.
"We're pretty clear that we find these riders as unacceptable," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. "We're being very emphatic."
On social issues, there are proposals to ban needle exchange programs that help stem the spread of HIV among drug users; cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading provider of abortions; and adopt an abstinence-only approach for grants to reduce teen pregnancy.
Those riders, in addition to GOP efforts to block implementation of the new health care law — a nonstarter with Democrats and the White House — are among the reasons the labor, health and education chapter of the omnibus spending measure is at risk of being left out of the final bill.
[See a slide show of 10 issues driving Obama's re-election campaign.]
"It's from soup to nuts," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. "They just designed an ideological agenda."
Reader Comments