VA budget won’t be passed by Veterans Day
Posted : Thursday Nov 8, 2007 11:35:30 EST
Plans to deliver a Veterans Affairs Department 2008 budget by Veterans Day fell apart Wednesday when a political maneuver to try to force President Bush to sign a bulging domestic spending bill backfired.
By a 47-46 vote, the Senate refused to approve a 2008 appropriations bill that included funding for the VA, military construction and the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, instead sending the measure back to the House of Representatives, which passed the combined bill Tuesday night by a 269-142 vote.
The Senate vote ended a gambit by congressional Democrats to get Bush to sign a domestic spending bill that was $9 billion more than he wanted by putting veterans’ programs on the same chopping block. Bush had warned lawmakers he would have vetoed the bill even with the veterans’ programs intact.
Democrats had tried to argue that veterans’ spending belonged in the domestic budget because the Labor Department has programs to help veterans find jobs, and uninsured veterans without service-connected disabilities benefit from Health and Human Services programs.
But Senate Republicans balked and used Senate rules to have the VA and military construction programs yanked from the bill because they were not in the original Senate-passed version.
The stripped-down Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill goes back to the House for another vote before it can be sent to the White House.
The VA-military construction bill will have to be reintroduced as a separate measure, with a separate vote required by the House and Senate.
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