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Congress Raises Ceiling for Borrowing    [

    Senate Approves Budget, Breaking Spending Limits
    By Carl Hulse
    The New York Times

    Friday 17 March 2006

    Washington - The Senate narrowly approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget Thursday that broke spending limits only hours after it increased federal borrowing power to avert a government default.

    The budget decision at the end of a marathon day of voting followed a separate 52-to-48 Senate vote to increase the federal debt limit by $781 billion, bringing the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. The move left Democrats attacking President Bush and Congressional Republicans for piling up record debt in their years in power.

    Despite calls by Republican deficit hawks to hold the line, Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to approve more than $16 billion in added spending for social, military, job safety and home-heating programs, exceeding a ceiling established by President Bush.

    In separate action, the House advanced $92 billion in war spending and hurricane recovery money.

    Even with the added money, the Senate approved the $2.8 trillion budget by only 51 to 49 with five Republicans defecting. Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana was the sole Democrat to back the budget after winning agreement for a new $10 billion effort for levee rebuilding and coastal protection to be paid for out of oil royalties and other sources. Her vote saved Vice President Dick Cheney from having to break a tie.

    The White House and Senate Republican leaders sought to put the best face on the budget outcome, with Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, crediting Republicans for "navigating difficult waters" in winning approval. Mr. Bolten said the administration would work to eliminate the added spending and restore the benefit cuts sought by the White House.

    The successful push for additional spending alarmed and frustrated conservative Republicans who have been trying to steer the party back to a course of more fiscal restraint.

    "It is very disturbing, and it gives me a whole lot of heartburn," said Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, who attributed the additional spending to political anxiety. "They want to go and say they are helping people, but we are not helping people when we are selling out their future."

    In the House, lawmakers easily approved almost $92 billion in emergency spending, with about $68 billion going for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and $19 billion for hurricane recovery, slightly less than the White House sought.

    The House and the Senate then left for a weeklong break.

    The Senate budget bill would clear the way to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, but the outlook for that provision is uncertain given strong resistance by Republican moderates in the House and a long legislative route before final approval.

    The budget fight and the focus on the rising national debt proved uncomfortable for some Republicans, who instead of tightening the federal belt found themselves caught in a Senate rush to add spending after raising the federal debt ceiling for the fourth time in five years.

    "This budget could be the final nail in our coffin, if we don't watch it," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who said the Republican spending pattern was demoralizing party voters. "I don't think we properly understand the keys to our electoral success."

    But Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who led the push for $7 billion in extra money for health and education programs, said those areas had been starved for money in recent years and could not afford to be overlooked again.

    "Health and education are the two major capital assets of this country," said Mr. Specter, whose proposal passed easily, 73 to 27.

    The provision, like many of the other spending increases, was ostensibly paid for, but Mr. Specter readily acknowledged that the plan to pay the new money out of the succeeding year's allocation was a gimmick.

    In another spending increase, the Senate unanimously approved $184 million for mine safety. The provision by Senators Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller IV, both West Virginia Democrats, would be used to hire mine safety inspectors and put in place better mine rescue technologies over five years. It came after a string of mining accidents that left 24 miners dead this year.

    The increases in spending took the budget further away from President Bush's original plan. Senate budget writers had stripped some Medicare cuts sought by the president and added other spending before even bringing it to the floor.

    Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who joined with Mr. Specter in seeking the increase for health and education, said the vote showed that his Republican colleagues were "recognizing the American people want something different than the president's budget."

    The changes also mean that reaching a final budget deal with the House will be difficult, given conservative resistance there to new spending. In a subtle swipe at the Senate, House Republicans circulated a memorandum on Thursday showing how they had been willing to resist efforts to add money for social and domestic security programs to the emergency spending bill.

    The administration told Congress that the increase in the statutory debt limit to nearly $9 trillion was needed to avoid a default and keep the government operating. The Senate action will clear the measure for the president's signature since the House had already approved it and Senate Republicans held off Democratic efforts to change the measure and force another House vote.

    The increase in the debt limit brought the total increase during the Bush administration to $3 trillion. Democrats said the rising debt was the consequence of what they described as a reckless Republican fiscal policy centered on tax cuts for the affluent.

    Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Thursday that given Mr. Bush's record, "I really do believe this man will go down as the worst president this country has ever had."

    Few Republicans took the floor to defend the debt limit request, and three - Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Conrad Burns of Montana and John Ensign of Nevada - joined all Democrats in opposing the increase.

    But Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Finance Committee, attributed most of the growth in the debt to increased domestic security and the costs of natural disasters.

    Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, said it was fitting the Senate would agree to raise the debt limit on the same day it adopted a budget that he said would add substantially to the nation's accumulating red ink over the next five years.

    "This thing is larded with debt," Mr. Conrad said.

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    Ian Urbina contributed reporting for this article.

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    Congress Raises Ceiling for Borrowing
    By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
    The Washington Post

    Friday 17 March 2006

$100 billion is spent without offsetting cuts.

    Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

    On vote after vote in the House and Senate, lawmakers demonstrated the growing gap between their political promises to rein in spending and their need to respond to emergencies and protect politically popular programs. The votes followed last weekend's GOP leadership meeting in Memphis, at which virtually every speaker called on the party to renew its commitment to fiscal discipline and to control federal spending and the deficit.

    The House voted 348 to 71 to approve a $92 billion measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing hurricane relief, after members rejected calls from conservatives to pay for at least some of that spending with budget cuts. On the other side of the Capitol, senators considering a budget blueprint for fiscal 2007 voted to effectively breach their own firm limits on spending by at least $16 billion to boost programs they said have been starved for funding.

    "You're talking about the guts of critical domestic programs," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said after the Senate voted 73 to 27 to increase spending on health, education and labor programs by $7 billion over the amount allotted in a 2007 budget blueprint. "All the talk in Memphis doesn't comport with the reality of these important programs."

    The budget squeaked through last night, 51 to 49. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) expressed regret that he could not hold President Bush's $873 billion line on discretionary spending, but he said negotiations with the House could bring spending back down.

    "It's not everything I wanted, obviously, but it's a step in the right direction," he said.

    With no brakes on spending and no moves afoot to raise taxes, the federal debt is now raising at an unprecedented clip. The government bumped up against its $8.18 trillion statutory debt ceiling last month, forcing the Treasury to borrow from employee pension funds to keep the government operating. After weeks of pleading from Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, the Senate took the politically unpalatable but economically critical step of raising the ceiling for borrowing to $8.96 trillion. Under House rules, the debt limit was raised last year without a vote when lawmakers approved a budget.

    It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

    "This should be a wake-up call for every member of the Senate, every member of Congress, and a wake-up call for the president of the United States," said Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. "The question is: Are we staying on this course to keep running up the debt, debt on top of debt, increasingly financed by foreigners, or are we going to change course?"

    Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) acknowledged that the debt has risen at a remarkable pace but said he and his colleagues had no alternative. "Without an increase in the debt limit, our government will face a choice that we shouldn't make and we wouldn't want to make, a choice between breaking the law by exceeding the statutory debt limit or, on the other hand, breaking faith with the public by defaulting on our debt."

    There appeared to be little change of course yesterday. After a two-day debate, the House approved $92 billion in funding for war costs and Hurricane Katrina recovery and added about $100 million for peacekeeping efforts in Sudan and to repair military sites on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

    Most of the House spending package, nearly $68 billion, would pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation would push total war costs since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly $400 billion. Before the Iraq invasion in 2003, administration officials predicted that costs related to the war would total less than $100 billion.

    The House added $850 million to Bush's original request to upgrade Army tracked combat vehicles and to make them available to National Guard units. Lawmakers approved an additional $480 million over Bush's request for newer, more heavily armored Humvees, for a total of $890 million. The bill also provides $2 billion to develop measures to counter the makeshift bombs that kill many U.S. troops.

    Service members would receive $400,000 in life insurance benefits under the House package, and family members of those killed in combat would receive a $100,000 death gratuity. The House granted a $4.85 billion White House request to train and equip security forces of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    An additional $4.1 billion was provided in nonmilitary foreign aid, more than half of it for diplomatic and local governance programs in Iraq. The original House package allocated $253 million for peacekeeping in Sudan, but a Democratic amendment, approved 213 to 208, increased the total by $50 million, to $303 million.

    The remaining $19 billion in the House package would assist the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast region, including aid for victims, community redevelopment projects, flood control and levee repair. Republicans turned back numerous Democratic attempts to increase Katrina-related funding. But a GOP amendment to strike the hurricane funding failed 332 to 89.

    "Congress must stop hiding wasteful spending under the American flag," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), one of several Republicans who voted against the final bill.

    Lawmakers narrowly defeated a Democratic amendment to increase port-related spending by $1.2 billion. The measure, offered by Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D-Minn), failed 210 to 208; it followed the lopsided 377 to 38 defeat Wednesday of an effort to strike language in the bill barring Dubai Ports World from taking management control of six U.S. ports.

    The Senate budget blueprint for the fiscal year that begins in October had dropped Bush's proposed cuts to Medicare before it reached the Senate floor. As they worked to complete the budget, senators from both parties - including Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who pledged in Memphis to increase his deficit-reduction efforts - voted overwhelmingly to boost funding for health, education and labor programs by $7 billion.

    Technically the measure did not break the budget resolution's $873 billion limit on federal programs funded annually at Congress's discretion, because the extra money was taken from prospective spending in 2008. But one of its sponsors, Specter, acknowledged that "it's not sort of a gimmick - it is a gimmick." Senators also voted to raise the limit on discretionary spending to fund an additional $3.3 billion for low-income heating assistance, $1.2 billion for additional aviation security and $1 billion for military survivors benefits.

    The only Democrat voting for the budget was Mary Landrieu (La.). 0aRepublicans voting against the budget were Lincoln D. Chaffee (R.I.), 0aNorm Coleman (Minn.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike DeWine (Ohio ) and 0aJohn Ensign (Nev.). Independent James M. Jeffords (Vt.) also voted 0aagainst the budget.