Spending Add-Ons Slow an 'Emergency' Bill
There's not much urgency for the emergency spending bill.
House and Senate leaders have started informal talks on a supplemental appropriations package that President Bush requested to fund the Iraq war and the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort. The Pentagon is starting to clamor for its money. But the Senate approved a bill that is $14 billion bigger than Bush has said he will accept, and so far, nothing in it has been axed.
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Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who chair the House and Senate appropriations committees, still hope to produce a bill before Memorial Day. Aides said the two have agreed on one point: that an across-the-board cut probably isn't the best way of reducing the Senate's $109 billion bill to the $95 billion limit Bush has set.
That means some of the projects that the Senate stuffed into its package will probably survive, although in smaller versions -- such as money to move a rail line away from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, but perhaps not the $700 million that the Senate would have provided.
A giant add-on in the Senate bill is $4 billion in assistance to farmers and ranchers for drought and flood damage and to compensate for higher energy-related costs. To preserve that funding, lawmakers from agricultural states could produce offsets in other areas of the farm budget.
One area vulnerable to cuts is the foreign assistance funding that both bills would provide for diplomatic and humanitarian efforts.
Medicare Drug Penalty May Be Eased
Seniors who didn't enroll in the Medicare drug benefit by yesterday must wait until winter to sign up. But GOP lawmakers in both chambers are weighing different options to remove penalties, and legislation may start moving in the coming days.
Waiving the fee is the one small concession that Republicans said they are willing to consider for the several million eligible seniors who don't have drug coverage but who opted not to purchase a Medicare plan before yesterday's deadline. The penalty, based on 1 percent of the national average premium price, would add about $2 to a beneficiary's monthly coverage cost if he or she signs up during the next enrollment period, which begins Nov. 15. The longer seniors without coverage wait, the higher the fee.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats have lambasted the penalty as an unfair "tax," but the idea is not unique to the Medicare drug benefit. If seniors don't sign up for regular Medicare Part B coverage -- for doctor visits, lab tests and the like -- during specified enrollment periods, they also may be subject to extra charges.
Democrats also want to extend the enrollment period, but that idea has repeatedly been dismissed by Republicans as impractical, given the scores of participating insurance plans. Also, the deadline and the penalty are meant to act as incentives for healthy seniors to sign up for Medicare drug coverage -- a key factor to the program's fiscal stability.
For GOP, a Double Setback on Judges
Some Republicans think a renewed push to put conservative judges on the federal bench is among the best political fights they can pick these days, but they have suffered a double setback recently that has cooled the enthusiasm in many circles.
Yesterday a conservative coalition held a conference call with journalists, hoping to breathe new life into the appellate court nomination of Terrence W. Boyle. Numerous GOP senators have been notably quiet about Boyle.
Boyle, a federal district judge in North Carolina, has been waiting for a confirmation vote to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit appellate court since 1991, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) can call for such a vote whenever he chooses. But Boyle, who has a comparatively high rate of being reversed by higher courts, has drawn strong Democratic opposition, and the long wait has not helped.
Salon.com recently raised allegations of a conflict of interest in Boyle's stock holdings. Conservative activists have grown frustrated at what they consider a lackluster bid by the White House and others to refute the charges, a task that has fallen mainly to Boyle's former law clerks.
The Committee for Justice, a group that backed the Supreme Court confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., hosted yesterday's conference call in hopes of drawing more attention to the law clerks' letters of support. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has indicated he is looking for a more comprehensive and objective response to the Salon.com report.
Senate Democrats also appear to be spoiling for a fight over Mississippi lawyer Michael B. Wallace, Bush's choice for a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The American Bar Association last week unanimously rated Wallace "unqualified," the first such vote in almost a quarter-century. Wallace has yet to have a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, but some Republicans are wincing at the ABA announcement.
The one bright spot for conservatives is White House staff secretary Brett M. Kavanaugh, nominated for the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Senate leaders plan a vote next week, and Democrats agree they cannot block him.
