WASHINGTON — Underscoring the difficulty of reining in spending in an election year, the House on Thursday approved more money for U.S. military operations and hurricane recovery while the Senate voted to make room for other government costs by raising the federal debt limit.
In another action, the Senate approved a proposed $2.8-trillion annual budget that would boost funding for a number of politically popular domestic programs.
The budget resolution, which provides guidelines for future legislation, includes a new effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, a measure long sought by President Bush that faces major hurdles in the House.
The spending-related votes came days after a parade of potential GOP presidential candidates decried the federal budget deficit and pledged to reduce it.
"Now is the time to reaffirm our roots as the party of fiscal discipline," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) declared last weekend at a GOP gathering in Memphis, Tenn.
But Capitol Hill's political realities paved the way for easy passage of the House bill providing $91.9 billion in emergency spending -- the bulk of it, $67.6 billion, for the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also would funnel an additional $19.2 billion to Gulf Coast communities damaged by Hurricane Katrina last summer.
"Concerns about the deficit and spending are overridden by the urgent issues before us -- supporting our troops and helping hurricane victims," said Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.).
The vote on the bill was 348 to 71; Senate action is expected within several weeks.
Other political realities led to the Senate's narrow approval Thursday of the debt-limit increase and the 2007 budget resolution.
Failure to raise the debt limit would have resulted in the first-ever default on Treasury notes. The Senate's vote allows the government to borrow an additional $781 billion, bringing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion.
The budget resolution, meanwhile, became a vehicle for lawmakers -- including some Republicans facing tough reelection campaigns -- to go on record favoring more spending for education, healthcare and heating-bill subsidies.
Some Republicans in the GOP-controlled Congress were disgruntled by what they viewed as a continuing failure by party leaders to take tougher stances on spending.
