(The following article by Sean Reilly was posted on the Mobile Register website on May 5.)
WASHINGTON — The Senate Thursday passed a $109 billion bill to pay for the war in Iraq and hurricane aid for the Gulf Coast, but a presidential veto threat imperils many provisions added by lawmakers, including a controversial $700 million plan to reroute a CSX railroad freight line further inland from the Mississippi coast.
The rail relocation is championed by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who will play an influential role on the “conference committee” that must now iron out the differences between the Senate bill and a much thriftier House version. The Senate bill has grown to about $14 billion more than President Bush says he is willing to accept.
The upshot could be a Republican-versus-Republican game of chicken that — if the bill dies — would hold up spending for U.S. soldiers fighting abroad, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. In that case, blame would probably fall most heavily on the GOP, Ornstein said, since Republicans control both the White House and Congress.
The CSX line currently carries freight between New Orleans and Mobile, where the potential reduction in service has sparked fears of losing commerce and jobs. Despite Cochran’s stature, several outside observers predicted that he could have a hard time securing the relocation money. Last week, the Senate came close to squelching funding for the project on a 47-50 vote, noted Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, D.C.
Coupled with Bush’s veto threat, Ellis said, the level of opposition “is going to put a lot of pressure on the conference committee to remove that provision or to do something to scale it back or put some strings to it.”
Scott Frisch, a political scientist at California State University-Channel Islands, said he believes that Cochran has the muscle to push the provision into the final bill. But he also said that Bush –who has not vetoed a bill during more than five years in office — is eager to show fiscal conservatives that he’s not afraid to confront Congress over spending.
“At this point in his presidency, he needs something to energize his base,” Frisch said Thursday.
Even before the bill passed the Senate, Bush was ratcheting up the rhetorical pressure.
“Unfortunately, there are some here in Washington trying to load that bill up with unnecessary spending,” Bush said Wednesday. “This bill is for emergency spending, and it should be limited to emergency measures.”
The rail plan has divided Alabama’s two senators. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, effectively voted last week to kill the rail funding. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, wanted to leave the appropriation intact.
“At the end of the day he believes this will benefit Mobile and the entire Gulf area,” said Shelby spokeswoman Katie Boyd.
The two men diverged again in Thursday’s 78-20 vote for Senate passage, with Shelby voting in favor and Sessions voting against.
Along with a wealth of pet projects, the Senate measure contains $65.7 billion for war operations and $28.8 billion for hurricane relief, including grants to states to build and repair housing and $3.9 billion for levees and flood control projects in Louisiana. Bush’s veto threat puts at risk items not requested by the president, such as $4 billion in farm disaster aid, $1 billion in state grants and $1.1 billion in aid to the Gulf Coast seafood industry.
That last appropriation was added by Shelby, who was the only lawmaker to lose a fight over a specific spending item when the Senate decided last week to drop $15 million for seafood promotion. As a senior member of the appropriations committee, Shelby will also be on the conference committee. House leaders promise to take a hard line in the upcoming negotiations.
“The House will not take up an emergency supplemental spending bill for Katrina and the war in Iraq that spends one dollar more than what the president asks for. Period,” said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Such threats didn’t deter senators from adding more projects almost up to the moment the final bill sailed through.
David Vitter, R-La., obtained another $200 million in New Orleans-area flood control projects Thursday, bringing the total for such efforts to $3.9 billion. The addition was financed by cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund.
The White House is on guard against possible attempts by lawmakers to further cut a $67.6 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as they search out funds for hurricane relief and border protection.
During almost two weeks before the full Senate, the bill grew continuously despite a toughly worded veto threat made on the first day of debate. Bush said he would veto any bill exceeding his $92.2 billion request for the war and hurricane relief plus an additional $2.3 billion to prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic.
The veto threat emboldened conservatives such as Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla. They undertook — and mostly lost — battles against home-state projects inserted by senior senators such as Cochran, Shelby and Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.
During action last week in the full Senate, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., succeeded in diverting $1.9 billion in Pentagon funds to border security needs such as new aircraft and patrol boats. On Tuesday, lawmakers added about $1.7 billion for levees and other flood control projects in the New Orleans areas. But unlike Bush’s request last week, this money for flood control would not be offset by cutting the government’s chief disaster relief fund.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)