By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The House last night moved toward approving a $515.7 billion domestic spending bill that shaves billions from the Democrats' hoped-for spending levels but uses emergency spending and other tactics to challenge President Bush on his budget demands.

The bill, which funds every agency of government but the Defense Department, includes $31 billion for the war in Afghanistan. The Senate today is likely to take up resolutions tying Iraq war funding to the withdrawal of combat troops. If, as expected, those fall to Republican filibusters, the Senate will vote to increase the House's war funding total to $70 billion and make it available for the war in Iraq as well. Without such war funds, the president would veto the bill, the White House said yesterday.

Aside from the war funding issue, the White House said it was "pleased" with the final spending level, even with the added billions for "emergency" spending on border security, veterans care and other long-anticipated issues.

"I'm pleased to report that we're making some pretty good progress toward coming up with a fiscally sound budget -- one that meets priorities, helps on some emergencies and enables us to say that we've been fiscally sound with the people's money," Bush told an audience in Fredericksburg yesterday.

Republicans said they were somewhat surprised by the response from the White House, which has geared up for a battle with the Democratic-controlled Congress over spending, first rejecting Democratic bills that would spend $22 billion more than Bush requested, then rebuffing an offer to cut that level to $11 billion.

But by designating funding for border security, veterans care, nutrition assistance, even security for political conventions, as "emergencies," Democrats produced a bill that exceeded the president's spending limit by $11 billion. Conservatives in and out of Congress criticized the 1,482-page bill strongly, blasting the measure's 8,983 home-district and home-state pet projects, known as earmarks, and condemning a few remaining policy changes, including a measure to protect some national forest land from logging and another severing overseas AIDS relief from abstinence-education mandates.

"In trying to push through a half-trillion dollars in government spending this evening, Democrats will claim their bottom-line numbers are in line with the president's, and their top-line priorities are in line with the American people's," said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). "But as page after page of this massive document makes plain, neither contention is true."

Pat Toomey, president of the fiscally conservative political action committee Club for Growth, exhorted, "If the Republican Party has any intention of reclaiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility, its leaders in the House and Senate will have to rally the troops to vote against the bill."

In their struggle to meet White House demands while preserving some of their priorities, Democratic leaders made changes to their initial spending bills that seemed to anger everyone. Environmentalists were annoyed by a provision allowing the Department of Energy to guarantee loans to energy companies for the development of liquid coal and nuclear projects that otherwise could not receive bank financing.

"This is the mother of all gift cards to the nuclear and coal industry," said Anna Aurilio, Washington director of Environment America.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, lamented that Democrats had given up ending a Bush administration policy that prevents federal aid from going to international family planning organizations that offer abortions.

Even Democratic leaders were only mildly supportive of the compromise measure they had forged in hopes of winning the president's signature before Christmas. "The omnibus appropriations bill is totally inadequate to meet the long-term investment needs of the country, but it is a whole lot better than the country would have without a Democratic Congress," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.).

The final bill includes $607 million more than Bush requested for disease research, $1 billion more for medical care for the underinsured and uninsured, $146 million more for rural health care, $767 million more for education aid to disadvantaged students and special-needs children, $1.7 billion more for college assistance, $1.2 billion more for state and local law enforcement and $1.8 billion more for homeland security grants.

NARAL praised the bill's inclusion of a $22 million increase in federal family planning assistance, as well as the decision to deny the president a $39 million increase in abstinence education funds.

"While the president's stubborn opposition will deny Americans the full investment they deserve in these priorities, the Democratic budget begins to reverse seven years of neglect and charts a new direction," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.

To get the bill to the president, Democratic leaders are counting on some parliamentary legerdemain. House leaders last night were counting on Democratic unity to overcome opposition among conservative Republicans.

Once Senate Republicans add billions for the war in Iraq, without demanding war policy changes, the measure will lose the support of many Democrats who had vowed never again to approve more war funding unless the money helped pull U.S. troops out. Even Pelosi is likely to vote against the final version of bill.

So Democrats will need strong Republican support later this week to get those war funds to Bush. The House is then expected to vote on a war funding amendment that could pass with near-unanimous Republican support, plus considerable numbers of Democratic votes.