Mike Irwin
Member
From Reuters/Yahoo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Thursday finally approved a huge $375 billion catchall federal spending bill for fiscal year 2004 that had been delayed for months by bitter disputes over issues ranging from media ownership to gun records and food labels.
The Senate voted 65-28 to pass the 1,200-page bill after Democrats, under pressure to free up its funding for everything from foreign aid, farm, veterans, education, transportation and health programs to the State Department and FBI (news - web sites), abandoned procedural tactics they had been using to oppose it.
"Nobody here wants to be accused of shutting the government down," admitted Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. "But it is with great concern and chagrin that we find ourselves in this position today."
The House of Representatives approved the package in December before adjourning for the year. The bill will now go to President Bush (news - web sites) to be signed into law.
Congress is supposed to pass the 13 spending bills needed to fund federal agencies by the start of each new fiscal year on Oct. 1. But only six were finished last year, with the remaining seven rolled up into the huge "omnibus" package.
In the meantime, much of the federal government has been operating under stopgap funding arrangements since Oct. 1.
Congress regularly deadlocks in its annual budget debates and last year a similar impasse dragged into February.
But the delay was still a blow for Republicans, who had vowed to get the federal budget process back on track after adding control of the Senate to their command of the House.
FUNDING SQUEEZE
It was also a practical setback for the many federal agencies that the bill finances -- which have had to operate at current, mostly lower, funding levels for almost a third of the new fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1.
This year's spending debates were dogged by a series of bitter policy fights between Congress and the White House. While the White House's veto threats finally won out, they also slowed the process and sapped support for the final bill.
Republican leaders in Congress eventually headed off a bipartisan effort to block the Bush administration from changing overtime pay regulations. Backers argue the changes will modernize outdated work rules, but critics say they may cost up to 8 million workers their right to overtime.
They also agreed to hotly disputed compromises on how many local stations U.S. television networks can own and on delaying rules mandating country-of-origin labels for food products.
Lawmakers from both parties have also protested at the thousands of so-called earmarks -- funds set aside for individual lawmakers' pet projects -- in the package at a time when federal budget deficits are at record levels.
But Republicans said the bill remained below Congress' budget limit and would hold the growth of federal discretionary spending to under 3 percent in 2004, the lowest in some time.
That total will almost certainly be increased, though, by the rising costs of military operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and elsewhere. Those costs helped drive up the spending that Congress controls by almost 16 percent in fiscal year 2003.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Thursday finally approved a huge $375 billion catchall federal spending bill for fiscal year 2004 that had been delayed for months by bitter disputes over issues ranging from media ownership to gun records and food labels.
The Senate voted 65-28 to pass the 1,200-page bill after Democrats, under pressure to free up its funding for everything from foreign aid, farm, veterans, education, transportation and health programs to the State Department and FBI (news - web sites), abandoned procedural tactics they had been using to oppose it.
"Nobody here wants to be accused of shutting the government down," admitted Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. "But it is with great concern and chagrin that we find ourselves in this position today."
The House of Representatives approved the package in December before adjourning for the year. The bill will now go to President Bush (news - web sites) to be signed into law.
Congress is supposed to pass the 13 spending bills needed to fund federal agencies by the start of each new fiscal year on Oct. 1. But only six were finished last year, with the remaining seven rolled up into the huge "omnibus" package.
In the meantime, much of the federal government has been operating under stopgap funding arrangements since Oct. 1.
Congress regularly deadlocks in its annual budget debates and last year a similar impasse dragged into February.
But the delay was still a blow for Republicans, who had vowed to get the federal budget process back on track after adding control of the Senate to their command of the House.
FUNDING SQUEEZE
It was also a practical setback for the many federal agencies that the bill finances -- which have had to operate at current, mostly lower, funding levels for almost a third of the new fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1.
This year's spending debates were dogged by a series of bitter policy fights between Congress and the White House. While the White House's veto threats finally won out, they also slowed the process and sapped support for the final bill.
Republican leaders in Congress eventually headed off a bipartisan effort to block the Bush administration from changing overtime pay regulations. Backers argue the changes will modernize outdated work rules, but critics say they may cost up to 8 million workers their right to overtime.
They also agreed to hotly disputed compromises on how many local stations U.S. television networks can own and on delaying rules mandating country-of-origin labels for food products.
Lawmakers from both parties have also protested at the thousands of so-called earmarks -- funds set aside for individual lawmakers' pet projects -- in the package at a time when federal budget deficits are at record levels.
But Republicans said the bill remained below Congress' budget limit and would hold the growth of federal discretionary spending to under 3 percent in 2004, the lowest in some time.
That total will almost certainly be increased, though, by the rising costs of military operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and elsewhere. Those costs helped drive up the spending that Congress controls by almost 16 percent in fiscal year 2003.