Gold9472
02-19-2006, 01:41 AM
Budget glitch ignites partisan battle in House
GOP squelches bid by Pelosi to probe how bill advanced
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/17/MNGEVHA7BC1.DTL
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, February 17, 2006
Washington -- A clerical error, albeit a whopping $2 billion one, became the latest focus Thursday of bitter partisan tensions in the House.
House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was stifled in her attempt to get the House Ethics Committee to investigate how the House approved and sent to President Bush for his signature earlier this month legislation she says Republican leaders knew contained a provision the chamber had never voted on.
If such an investigation were authorized, it could end up focusing on House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., whom Pelosi hopes to replace if the Democrats gain control of the House in November's congressional elections.
"I know the speaker knew this was an invalid bill and still gave the go-ahead to send it to the president,'' Pelosi said.
She said the Republican leaders' action on the so-called Deficit Reduction Act was part of what she calls the culture of corruption, cronyism and incompetence in GOP-controlled Washington.
The Republicans, of course, disagree, calling the issue of the bill's language a technical problem that could be corrected if the minority Democrats consented.
At issue is the arcane question of how much and for how long the federal government pays suppliers for medical equipment for Medicare patients.
In the back-and-forth between the two houses, the Senate voted for a 13-month provision, which House and Senate negotiators had agreed to in the $39 billion cost-savings budget bill. But a clerk in the Senate incorrectly wrote 36 months as the bill was prepared to be sent back to the House for final passage.
The House passed it, including the 36-month provision that the Congressional Budget Office says would inadvertently cost the government about $2 billion more than Congress intended. But when the final bill reached the White House, the figure was back to 13 months, even though the House never approved that wording.
"They know this is wrong,'' Pelosi charged. "If this isn't stopped, they can send anything to the president. This is unconstitutional.''
Republican leaders have been largely close-mouthed. "I believe that it's law,'' House Majority Whip Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told the Associated Press.
The Senate passed a resolution that would correct the wording, but House Democrats refused to grant the unanimous consent to allow the correction to pass without reopening the entire bill to a new vote. That refusal could give the impression Democrats are more interested in keeping a partisan issue alive than in correcting the clerk's mistake.
Democrats charge that the House Republican leadership doesn't want to reopen the legislation because the controversial bill, which involved cuts in many popular programs, passed barely on a 216-214 vote.
In the Senate, the bill passed only with the tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Knowing she'd lose, Pelosi tried to force the issue on Thursday, introducing a privileged resolution that requires the House to interrupt other business and take up such proposals. Her resolution was read into the record, but the House's new majority leader, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, immediately called for tabling it without debate. He won on a party-line vote.
Because the House minority has few vehicles to put forward its agenda or protest majority actions, Pelosi has used the privileged resolution frequently. For instance, she has tried unsuccessfully to call for more House oversight on the war in Iraq. Another resolution condemned alleged vote-buying when the House approved the Medicare prescription benefit in November 2003.
The latest mess is already the subject of a lawsuit brought by an Alabama attorney who says that any schoolchild who has taken a civics class knows that the president can only sign a bill with identical wording in its House- and Senate-passed versions.
GOP squelches bid by Pelosi to probe how bill advanced
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/17/MNGEVHA7BC1.DTL
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, February 17, 2006
Washington -- A clerical error, albeit a whopping $2 billion one, became the latest focus Thursday of bitter partisan tensions in the House.
House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was stifled in her attempt to get the House Ethics Committee to investigate how the House approved and sent to President Bush for his signature earlier this month legislation she says Republican leaders knew contained a provision the chamber had never voted on.
If such an investigation were authorized, it could end up focusing on House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., whom Pelosi hopes to replace if the Democrats gain control of the House in November's congressional elections.
"I know the speaker knew this was an invalid bill and still gave the go-ahead to send it to the president,'' Pelosi said.
She said the Republican leaders' action on the so-called Deficit Reduction Act was part of what she calls the culture of corruption, cronyism and incompetence in GOP-controlled Washington.
The Republicans, of course, disagree, calling the issue of the bill's language a technical problem that could be corrected if the minority Democrats consented.
At issue is the arcane question of how much and for how long the federal government pays suppliers for medical equipment for Medicare patients.
In the back-and-forth between the two houses, the Senate voted for a 13-month provision, which House and Senate negotiators had agreed to in the $39 billion cost-savings budget bill. But a clerk in the Senate incorrectly wrote 36 months as the bill was prepared to be sent back to the House for final passage.
The House passed it, including the 36-month provision that the Congressional Budget Office says would inadvertently cost the government about $2 billion more than Congress intended. But when the final bill reached the White House, the figure was back to 13 months, even though the House never approved that wording.
"They know this is wrong,'' Pelosi charged. "If this isn't stopped, they can send anything to the president. This is unconstitutional.''
Republican leaders have been largely close-mouthed. "I believe that it's law,'' House Majority Whip Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told the Associated Press.
The Senate passed a resolution that would correct the wording, but House Democrats refused to grant the unanimous consent to allow the correction to pass without reopening the entire bill to a new vote. That refusal could give the impression Democrats are more interested in keeping a partisan issue alive than in correcting the clerk's mistake.
Democrats charge that the House Republican leadership doesn't want to reopen the legislation because the controversial bill, which involved cuts in many popular programs, passed barely on a 216-214 vote.
In the Senate, the bill passed only with the tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Knowing she'd lose, Pelosi tried to force the issue on Thursday, introducing a privileged resolution that requires the House to interrupt other business and take up such proposals. Her resolution was read into the record, but the House's new majority leader, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, immediately called for tabling it without debate. He won on a party-line vote.
Because the House minority has few vehicles to put forward its agenda or protest majority actions, Pelosi has used the privileged resolution frequently. For instance, she has tried unsuccessfully to call for more House oversight on the war in Iraq. Another resolution condemned alleged vote-buying when the House approved the Medicare prescription benefit in November 2003.
The latest mess is already the subject of a lawsuit brought by an Alabama attorney who says that any schoolchild who has taken a civics class knows that the president can only sign a bill with identical wording in its House- and Senate-passed versions.