Spending bill advances in Senate

Six-month measure a step closer to debate; jobs for vets blocked

— A spending bill required to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month has cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate.

Also Wednesday, the Senate blocked legislation that would have established a $1 billion jobs program putting veterans back to work tending to the country’s federal lands and bolstering local police and fire departments.

The bipartisan 76-22 vote on the spending bill is the first step toward opening debate on the measure, with Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas voting no, and Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor voting yes.

The legislation would fund the day-to-day operating budgets of every Cabinet department and continue covering military operations overseas for the first six months of the 2013 fiscal year. The legislation was adopted Sept. 13 by the House, 329-91, after Republicans dropped their demands for spending cuts in the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, now the Republican vice presidential nominee.

The measure would fund agencies at an annualized rate of $1.047 trillion, excluding emergency spending, which would translate to a 0.6 percent funding increase for most federal programs until March 27. Some initiatives, including cyber-security, wildfire-suppression efforts, veterans’ disability-benefit processing and next year’s presidential inauguration, would receive more.

The legislation also would extend the pay freeze for federal workers, including members of Congress. Senate leaders have said they plan to clear the measure for President Barack Obama’s signature.

Meanwhile, the Senate blocked the veterans-jobs program legislation, with Republicans saying the spending authorized in the bill violated limits that Congress agreed to last year. Democrats fell two votes shy of the 60-vote majority needed to waive the objection, forcing the legislation back to committee.

Supporters loosely modeled their proposal after President Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps used during the Great Depression to put people to work planting trees, building parks and constructing dams. They said the latest monthly jobs report, showing a nearly 11 percent unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, merited action from Congress.

With “a need so great as unemployed veterans, this is not the time to draw a technical line on the budget,” said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the bill’s lead sponsor, who faces a competitive reelection battle.

Republicans said the effort to help veterans was noble, but the bill was flawed nevertheless.

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said the federal government already has six job-training programs for veterans and there is no way to know how well they are working. He argued that making progress on the country’s debt was the best way to help veterans in the long-term.

“We ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids,” Coburn said.

Also Wednesday, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat said a vote may be held this week on $205.1 billion in tax-break extensions, including those for wind energy, corporate research and financial services companies’ overseas operations.

“We would like to move to it before we leave, get a vote on it,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday in an interview in Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is negotiating with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to schedule a vote, Durbin said. The Senate is trying to wrap up its business so members can go home and campaign for the Nov. 6 election.

Even if the Senate acts this week, the measure won’t become law because Republicans who have the majority in the House have said they will wait until after the election to address the tax breaks.

The House, meanwhile, has approved a bill called the Buffett Rule Act, after investor Warren Buffett, who has said that he and other wealthy people don’t pay enough in taxes. The legislation creates a checkbox on tax forms allowing taxpayers to make donations above their normal tax liability for debt reduction.

The original Buffett Rule bill, which was backed by Obama and failed in the Senate last April, would have required top earners to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

Obama “has used Warren Buffett as the poster-child for his class warfare scheme because Buffett complains that he doesn’t pay enough in taxes,” said bill sponsor Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.

“The Buffett Rule Act is a common sense alternative to President Obama’s divisive class warfare calls for higher taxes, and it allows Warren Buffett and others like him to voluntarily donate more of their money to pay down our national debt if that is what they’re really interested in doing.”

Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said there was “nothing wrong with this bill except the label.” The bill, he said, has “zero to do with the Buffett rule. It has everything to do with the absolute refusal of Republicans to face the basic issue,” the level of taxes that the wealthy pay.

The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., said the bill offered a simple way for people concerned about the debt to contribute. Now, he said, people must either send a separate check or money order to the Bureau of Public Debt or go online to that website and use a credit card.

Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking, Jim Abrams and staff members of The Associated Press and by Brian Faler and Kathleen Hunter of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/20/2012

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