06 August 1998
HOUSE APPROVES STATE, COMMERCE, JUSTICE APPROPRIATIONS BILL
(Clinton veto threatened over census sampling issue) (830) By Ralph Dannheisser USIA Congressional Correspondent Washington -- The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a $33,500 million fiscal year 1999 spending bill for the departments of Commerce, Justice and State and the federal courts that includes some $1,098 million to run the U.S. Information Agency. The funding measure was passed early August 6 by a 225-203 vote, largely along party lines, with the majority Republicans supplying most of the "yes" votes. Only 28 Democrats voted with 197 Republicans in favor of the funding measure; just 27 Republicans joined 175 Democrats and the chamber's only independent in opposition. The House action clears the way for establishment of a House-Senate conference committee to negotiate differences between the bills passed by the two chambers. The Senate passed its own version of the funding bill July 23, by a unanimous 99-0 vote. The measure still faces an uncertain future: President Clinton has warned that he may well exercise his veto power if the final legislation contains a provision in the House-passed bill that would effectively block use of statistical sampling in the federal census to be conducted in 2000. Republicans who included the provision contend that sampling violates the Constitution's requirement for an actual "enumeration" of citizens every 10 years. The Democrats -- and Census Bureau officials -- argue that sampling will make the count more accurate, catching minorities, immigrants and poor people who might otherwise be overlooked. The issue takes on political significance, since members of minorities have tended to favor Democrats, and so use of sampling could help Democrats when congressional districts are redrawn based on the census results. Floor action on two other issues -- votes boosting the amount the bill provided for the Legal Services Corporation and rejecting an effort to overturn a ban on job discrimination against homosexual federal employees -- seemed to dispose of additional points on which the administration had threatened a veto. The funding measure contains $475 million to cover the first installment of nearly $1,000 million that the United States owes to the United Nations -- but subject to passage of an additional authorization bill and ongoing reforms at the world body. One such reform would be a reduction in the U.S. share of the U.N.'s budget from 25 percent to 22 percent. An effort by Representative Roscoe Bartlett (Republican, Maryland) to strike the U.N. funds lost by a one-sided 279-151 vote. Members also voted to block implementation of agreements coming out of the 1997 U.S.-Russia Summit in Helsinki in which the two countries issued a joint statement concerning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty -- not yet ratified by either the Senate or the Russian Duma. Opponents object to language in the treaty which would limit construction of a broad national missile defense system. The $1,098 million that the bill provides for USIA is $7.4 million less than the agency's 1998 appropriation, and $21 million less than the president requested. In one key floor action involving USIA funding, supporters of TV Marti broadcasting to Cuba turned back an effort to cut from the budget $9.4 million designated for that purpose. They defeated, by a 251-172 vote, an amendment offered by Representative David Skaggs (Democrat, Colorado) to shift that amount from TV Marti to the U.S. Marshals Service. Skaggs, who argues the program is a waste of taxpayers' money in that Cuba manages to jam virtually all TV Marti broadcasts to the island, complained that $25,000 a day is being spent on "invisible television to nowhere." During heated floor debate, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Republican, Florida) cited a survey finding that the broadcasts sometimes manage to reach up to 49,000 people in areas of Havana. The bill takes note of the Clinton administration's intention to eliminate USIA as an independent agency and transfer its functions into the State Department, and requires that the transfer be completed by October, 1999. The House-proposed amount for USIA for fiscal 1999 is somewhat more generous than the $1,052 million provided in the Senate version passed earlier. In the vote on the Legal Services Corporation, Democrats and moderate Republicans combined to add $109 million to the $141 million that the bill had budgeted for legal assistance for the poor. The new $250 million total still is $33 million less than the agency is receiving this year. As for the contentious issue of the job rights of homosexuals in the federal work force, the House rejected, 252-176, an amendment by Representative Joel Hefley (Republican, Colorado) designed to prohibit enforcement of a May 28 executive order on the issue by Clinton. The order expanded previous protections against job discrimination based on race, color, gender, national origin, disability and age to include "sexual orientation."
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