Senate clears bill to avert agency closing
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Thursday cleared a stopgap spending measure to avoid shutting down most federal agencies at midnight Saturday.
The measure — now ready for President Barack Obama's signature — would give Congress until Dec. 18 to finish seven incomplete spending measures that were supposed to be wrapped up by Sept. 30.
The Senate cleared the bill by a 72-28 vote after a 247-178 House vote earlier Thursday.
The legislation also extends highway programs and federal loan guarantees for larger mortgages.
The anti-shutdown measure was attached to an unusually generous $32.2 billion spending bill for the Interior Department and environmental programs, one that pumps billion of dollars into clean and safe drinking water projects.
Several of the remaining bills, including a $626 billion measure funding the Pentagon, now appear likely to be bundled together into an omnibus measure that lawmakers had hoped to avoid.
The underlying bill rewards Interior and the EPA and some smaller agencies with increases of $4.7 billion over 2009 levels, an increase of 17 percent. The biggest increases go to EPA grants to state and local governments for sewage treatment projects, wastewater treatment and clean drinking water projects.
The generosity raised hackles with Republicans, who said the increases are simply unaffordable — and unsustainable — given the government's dismal deficit picture.
"The 17 percent increase in this agreement is irresponsible, especially in light of the fact that Congress must soon consider legislation to increase our national debt," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
But Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the chief author of the bill in the House, said that former President George W. Bush had squeezed interior and environmental accounts in his eight years in office. Bush routinely cut back grants to state and local governments that are extremely popular with lawmakers, forcing them to rummage through other accounts to restore the cuts.
"The programs funded through this bill have been chronically underfunded," Dicks said. "This bill invests taxpayers' dollars in our natural resources, and for this investment, all Americans will see great returns."
There's also $475 million to restore the Great Lakes, a sevenfold increase requested by President Barack Obama, as well as lesser amounts to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay and the Long Island Sound.
But at the same time, Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., used his clout to muscle through a provision to effectively exempt 13 ships that haul iron ore, coal and other freight on the Great Lakes from a proposed federal rule meant to reduce air pollution.
The measure is a favorite of lawmakers, in large measure because it contains a raft of so-called earmarks, those back-home goodies they treasure so much. Besides the clean water projects, there's money for land acquisition for parks and wildlife refuges, visitor centers at national parks, and repair of landmarks.
Overall, there are 542 earmarks totaling $341 million in the bill, according to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the leading foe of the practice.
The small, but heavily earmarked Save America's Treasures program is designed to preserve "irreplaceable" U.S. cultural and heritage resources such as Thomas Edison's lab notes and the bus in which Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. Lawmakers, however, often direct the money to refurbish projects such as old small-town movie houses and county courthouses.
For instance, the measure contains $500,000 requested by Kansas GOP Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts to help restore the Colonial Fox Theatre in Pittsburg, Kan. A half-dozen other theaters would receive funds as well.
McCain took aim at $150,000 to help renovate the Sterling Opera House in Derby, Connecticut.
"Seventeen percent of the people in my state are without a job, and we're going to spend $150,000 to renovate an opera house in Connecticut?" McCain said.
The measure also includes an unusual provision authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., aimed at prodding the National Park Service to extend the permit for an oyster farm in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Feinstein was siding with oyster farmer Kevin Lunny in a battle with the agency and local environmentalists who claimed that Lunny's oyster farm was harming seals and doing other damage to the pristine estuary called Drakes Estero.
