Senate to vote Thursday on war supplemental appropriations bill with Medicaid provisions

Senate Democrats on Tuesday "scaled down" their version of the war supplemental appropriations bill but retained a provision that would block for one year seven new Medicaid regulations proposed by the Bush administration, CQ Today reports.

During floor debate, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) raised a point of order against an amendment approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee, "effectively killing the domestic spending portion of their legislation and replacing it with a new, slimmed-down version," according to CQ Today.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) replaced the amendment with a new measure proposed by the Senate leadership that excludes a number of domestic spending provisions, such as language that would have established a grant program for nurses to help address the current shortage. According to CQ Today, "Reid characterized the maneuver as an attempt to reach across the aisle and offer Republicans a version of the measure that might be more palatable to them." Reid subsequently filed a cloture motion, a move that will result in a floor vote on the bill on Thursday.

Congress likely will not approve the bill before the Memorial Day recess, as the "House would have to clear the measure after the Senate sends the measure back to that chamber," CQ Today reports. "Democratic leaders have set an informal deadline of June 15 for clearing the bill, but that goal also could prove elusive" in the event that President Bush "rejects the pared-down version," according to CQ Today (Rogin/Higa, CQ Today, 5/20).

The White House on Tuesday renewed a threat to veto the bill (Taylor, AP/Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/21). The White House opposes including a number of domestic spending provisions in the legislation, as well as the measure that would delay "Medicaid changes it said were designed to stop waste and fraud in the program," the Washington Times reports (Miller, Washington Times, 5/21).

Budget Resolution

In related news, congressional Democrats on Tuesday released a fiscal year 2009 budget resolution that "puts the federal budget mostly on autopilot, leaving the winner of November's presidential election with a set of enormous challenges," the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The resolution does not include spending reductions for Medicare, Medicaid and other domestic programs proposed by Bush. According to the AP/Star Tribune, the resolution "does nothing to address the unsustainable growth of federal benefit programs" and includes "big increases for veterans' health care and ... increases of 3% for many domestic agencies."

The House and Senate likely will vote on the resolution on Wednesday (Taylor, AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5/20).