Senate Protects Arts Funding
By ALAN FRAM, AP
WASHINGTON (AP), The Senate decisively rejected a conservative effort to kill
the National Endowment for the Arts today as Congress tries to wrap up some of its
spending work before embarking on its August recess. Sen. Bob Smith, I-N.H.,
proposed eliminating the entire $99 million provided for the endowment in a Senate bill,
but was defeated 80-16. Though some of the controversial arts projects the endowment has
financed over the years have made it a perennial target of conservatives, today's vote
underlined how the Senate has long looked favorably at the agency.
The vote came as the Senate resumed debating a $14.1 billion measure financing
the Interior Department and cultural programs. That measure has become a
battleground over mining and other issues pitting industry against environmental concerns.
The House also planned to continue considering a $37.7 billion measure today
that would finance the departments of Justice, State and Commerce and smaller agencies for
the coming fiscal year. The House Commerce-Justice measure had contained $141
million for the Legal Services Corp., which provides free legal representation in civil
cases for the poor. But in an alliance of Democrats and moderate Republicans, the House
voted 242-178 Wednesday to boost that figure to $250 million.
``Simple decency and a commitment to equal justice under the law should be
enough'' to win support for the corporation, said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
On the losing side were conservatives, who try to slash Legal Services' budget
virtually every year. This year they cited a new report by the General Accounting Office,
Congress' official auditor, which found that five of the corporation's local offices had
counted 75,000 cases in 1997 that they couldn't document. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla.,
called the undocumented cases ``one of the most outrageous misrepresentations of any
agency ... probably one of the worst in this century.''
The $250 million still falls short of the $300 million provided for Legal
Services this year. But with President Clinton having requested $340 million for fiscal
2000 and the Senate having already voted for $300 million, the final figure is likely to
grow. The 25-year-old, nonprofit corporation receives federal and private aid and
distributes grants to local boards of lawyers, who then provide free legal assistance to
low-income people in civil cases.
The overall Commerce-Justice bill faces a White House veto threat because the
measure provides less than Clinton wants for legal aid, hiring local police officers,
protecting endangered species and U.S. payments to international organizations. The
measure, written largely by Republicans, includes nearly all of the $4.8 billion Clinton
requested for the 2000 census. Bowing to budget pressures, it declares $4.5 billion
of it an emergency, exempting that money from spending limits and paying for it out of
expected federal surpluses. Democrats, then conservatives, lost separate attempts to knock
that emergency designation out of the bill.
The Senate began debating the Interior bill last week as Democrats succeeded in
knocking out four provisions that they considered anti-environmental. But
supporters of the deleted language were expected to try reviving their provisions.
Among them is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who for the fourth time wants
to delay the Interior Department from forcing oil companies to pay higher royalties to the
government for drilling on federal lands.
With the start of fiscal 2000 less than two months away, the House has so far
approved 10 of the 13 annual spending bills for 2000.
The Senate has approved nine, including a $68 billion measure financing
agriculture and food programs. The Senate approved it Wednesday after including $7.4
billion in emergency aid for farmers hurt by drought and low crop prices. But so
far, a House-Senate compromise version of only one bill has gotten final congressional
approval, an $8.4 billion measure financing military construction.
In other spending action,
- House-Senate bargainers approved a compromise bill providing the District of
Columbia's local government with $429 million in federal aid and ordering it not to give
needles to illegal drug users in an effort to fight AIDS.
- House-Senate negotiators also agreed to a near $2.5 billion measure financing
Congress' own operations.
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