June 26, 2008

Spending Bill for Student Aid and NIH Hits Partisan Roadblock in House

Washington — Consideration of a major spending bill to increase funds for student aid and biomedical research was delayed indefinitely today because of partisan fighting in the U.S. House of Representatives on an unrelated issue.

The House Committee on Appropriations had been poised to approve the bill, for the 2009 fiscal year, when Republicans offered a motion to strip out all of the bill’s language and replace it with unrelated provisions, including one authorizing an expansion of oil drilling in the United States. The Republicans have been pushing that proposal as part of their argument, which has strong political resonance in this election year, that Congress’s Democratic leadership has not done enough to bring down soaring gasoline prices.

The move incensed the committee’s chairman, Rep. David R. Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin, who called it “a political stunt” of a type that explains why Americans “despise” Congress.

Democrats then moved to adjourn the session, which the committee approved only after Republicans demanded a roll-call vote.

The breakdown came only a day after Democrats and Republicans on the committee spent a good part of a separate meeting praising the panel’s spirit of bipartisan cooperation and lavishing praise on members from the opposite parties who had previously announced they would not run for re-election in November. But that was yesterday.

Last week an Appropriations subcommittee had approved the bill, which would raise the maximum Pell Grant to $4,900 and increase the National Institutes of Health’s budget by $1.2-billion, or about 4 percent. If the full committee resumes consideration and gives its approval, the bill would go next to the full House of Representatives for a vote. But approval may not come soon: Congress has a busy agenda before it adjourns at the end of July for a monthlong recess. —Jeffrey Brainard

Comments

1. I’m glad we have Obey at the helm of Appropriations. It’s unfortunate that the politics of the day are jeopardizing our investment in education – which is out best ticket for a secure future.

   — Jim    Jun 26, 03:58 PM    #

2. Obey is an idiot. The Democrats better realize that their time is limited if they keep this up.

   — Fellman    Jun 26, 04:02 PM    #

3. Heard an interesting story on the radio the other day: If this provision WAS somehow passed into law in this bill, the actual, refinable oil resulting from it would be available around the year 2020. If THAT prospect doesn’t hold down today’s gasoline prices, what possibly could?

   — Just Plain Cynical    Jun 26, 04:43 PM    #

4. Partisan politics must end. Our country must invest more in education and research. From a purely economic perspective such investments are worthwhile. And beyond that, they contribute to the health and wellbeing of our country. Blocking such investments is sheer lunacy.

   — Joe Erwin    Jun 26, 04:46 PM    #

5. This is just another example of the how the rePUCKican party has its collective head up its rear end! All we see from them is disingenuous posturing without ever providing real solutions!

   The whole off-shore drilling / drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge bit is just a way for this failed party to pay back the big oil interests for all the campaign contributions they have received. As JPC (#3) pointed out, it will be over 10 years before any of this oil actually makes it to U.S. gas stations. Even better though, the oil companies are actually drilling on less than 20% of ALL the land currently available for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. So look at all this for what it is – a giant land-grab by the oil companies aided & abetted by a group of 18th-century political hacks.

   — Gary    Jun 26, 06:01 PM    #

6. And in the end a perfectly legitimate need – financial aid for the most needy students – gets shoved to the side.

   I must be a Pollyanna, but I don’t get how a bill can become so distorted from its original intent….Is this really how the system was intended to work?

   — DG    Jun 27, 10:25 AM    #

7. In repsonse to #6, you can strip or shell a bill and add different language and provisions if it is in the same area, so to speak. Therefore, you can generlaly gut a spending bill for education and make it a spending bill for something else — they are both spending bills. Its not rare for this to happen.

   In this instance, it seems an awful dirty trick to gut an education bill that would help the middle class just to underscore the ‘pub position on drilling. I hope the voters are paying attention.

   — EAC    Jun 27, 03:17 PM    #

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