Democratic spending plan lets most Bush tax cuts expire
WASHINGTON -- The Democratic-controlled Congress finalized a $2.9 trillion budget last week that features more money for domestic spending and a plan to eliminate the deficit in five years.
The measure provides $23 billion more than President Bush sought for Democratic domestic priorities such as health care and education.
It projects a budget surplus of $41 billion by 2012.
The House approved the spending blueprint 214-209, with no Republicans supporting it.
The Senate voted 52-40 for the same bill, with only two Republicans in favor.
The budget is a blueprint for lawmakers to craft spending legislation later this year and is nonbinding.
Bush has pledged to veto any spending increases that surpass his initial funding requests.
Democrats said higher spending for domestic programs compensate for years of neglect by a Republican-controlled Congress.
The budget provides, on average, 5 percent increases for domestic programs like health care for veterans, community grants and education.
The plan assumes that many tax cuts enacted early in President Bush's tenure will expire as scheduled in 2010.
Republicans saw it as a way to enact massive tax increases.
A one-year fix to the alternative minimum tax is also in the plan, keeping it from effecting about 20 million more taxpayers.
That tax, enacted in 1969, was meant to target the wealthy but was never indexed for inflation.
Reps. Jon Porter and Dean Heller, both R-Nev., voted against the budget plan in the House. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., voted for it.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted for it in the Senate.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., voted against it.
EFFORT TO CUT WAR FUNDS FAILS
An attempt by anti-war Democrats to cut off money for the war in Iraq fell short in the Senate.
Just 29 senators, all Democrats, voted to advance to debate a measure by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., that would stop funding for the war by March 31, 2008.
Sixty votes were necessary to advance the bill, which was introduced as an amendment to an unrelated water projects measure.
Ensign voted against moving ahead with the Feingold amendment. Reid voted to close debate and move to a vote on the amendment.
Feingold said the support of 29 senators indicated a growing sentiment in Congress to end the war. Only a dozen senators voted for a troop withdrawal deadline last summer.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said a deadline for withdrawing funds sets a "surrender date" for the war.
Another war-related amendment also failed to gain enough votes to move forward.
A Republican proposal would have scaled back money for reconstruction in Iraq if the Iraqi government failed to meet a series of political and military benchmarks.
The 52-44 vote on the GOP plan fell eight votes short of advancing.
Democratic leaders criticized the measure as weak because it gave President Bush the right to waive the benchmark requirement.
Ensign voted to move forward with a vote. Reid voted against closing debate and moving to a vote.
HOUSE OKS defense spending
The House voted overwhelmingly to authorize $645.5 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2008, including more than $141 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The measure passed 397-27. It goes to the Senate.
Most of the money must still be appropriated through separate legislation.
Berkley, Heller and Porter voted for it.
It includes a 3.5 percent pay increase for military personnel.
President Bush has threatened to veto the bill because of language that grants collective bargaining rights to Pentagon employees and a "Buy American" provision than bans the Department of Defense from buying from companies that receive foreign subsidies.
Lawmakers rejected an amendment to the bill that would have prohibited war funding from being used to make contingency plans for military operations in Iran.
That vote was 216-202.
Berkley, Heller and Porter voted against the amendment.
