December 18, 2007

Standoff Over AMT Ends; Omnibus Sent To Senate

A temporary standoff on the omnibus spending bill was resolved today after the Senate agreed to vote on an alternative minimum tax patch with offsets, lawmakers and aides said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, addressing concerns of the moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats, had threatened not to send the spending bill to the Senate until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to bring up a fully offset AMT bill. Reid agreed to the change this afternoon, and Pelosi sent over the omnibus bill. "We're going to try to do a vote" on a fully offset AMT bill, Reid said, acknowledging that getting the new version through the Senate would be "a little harder."

President Bush is prepared to sign the omnibus package approved yesterday by the House, so long as Congress approves money he is seeking for the Iraq war. The administration today embraced an amendment by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying in a new Statement of Administration Policy [PDF] that unless the McConnell provision is adopted, Bush will veto the bill.

White House press secretary Dana Perino cautioned that aides continue to comb through the legislation. But barring any particularly unwelcome discoveries, Bush will accept the measure, she said.

The SAP accepts about $5.1 billion in domestic emergency spending for an array of items, including border security, as well as $3.7 billion in "contingency emergency funding" for veterans' health. Some are pointing to the supplemental provisions as an end run by Democrats around Bush's $933 billion regular order limit.

Perino sought to justify White House acceptance of the emergency domestic spending, arguing that Bush has held to his top line. "Most of that spending would have passed on an emergency basis anyway -- it's not added into the baseline of the budget," Perino said, pointing to funds for drought and wildfires. But the SAP argues that "some of the emergency provisions could and should have been funded in the regular budget."

Perino argued that the Veterans Affairs Department already has a "robust" budget, and she noted that new emergency money provided for veterans is contingent on Bush's approval, saying "we will take a look at it." Nevertheless, she said, "We think that, if there's going to be emergency money spent, that spending it on veterans is not a bad place to put it."

While noting that Congress has trimmed earmarks, White House officials continue to express dismay with the number of earmarks in the bill. The SAP warns that Bush "would not support any further additions to domestic spending or policy riders in the bill." It calls for passage of "further improvements to the bill being considered by the Senate," but it does not threaten a veto if measures other than the Iraq war money are not approved.

See CongressDailyPM (subscription) for more details on how Democrats overcame the impasse House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer previously warned could derail the AMT patch.

-Keith Koffler and Peter Cohn, CongressDaily

Posted at 3:40 PM
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