House, White House Reach Agreement on War Supplemental Spending Bill With Medicaid Provision

House leaders and the White House on Wednesday reached an agreement on a $250 billion supplemental war appropriations bill with a provision that would place a one-year moratorium on six new Medicaid regulations proposed by the Bush administration, CQ Today reports. Democrats had hoped to include a provision in the legislation that would delay all seven of the rules (Clarke/Higa, CQ Today, 6/18). Democrats reduced the amount that President Bush requested for the Department of Defense by $3.5 billion to finance their domestic priorities, such as additional funds for FDA (Rogers, The Politico, 6/18).

The House likely will pass the bill on Thursday, with the Senate expected to consider the legislation next week. According to the Washington Post, the House will vote on the bill in two parts, a move that will allow lawmakers to vote on war spending and domestic spending separately (Kane, Washington Post, 6/19).

Prospects
The legislation will "require significant Republican support to pass because fiscally conservative Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition are likely to object" to a provision in the bill that does not include pay/go rules, and "ardent opponents of the Iraq war are likely to object to funding combat operations with no restrictions," The Hill reports (Soraghan, The Hill, 6/18).

In addition, "Senate leaders were not directly involved in the talks" between House leaders and the White House, and the "tentative deal does not include some of the spending programs that senators had included in their own version, leaving it in question whether the Senate would go along with the House agreement," according to the New York Times (Huse, New York Times, 6/19). According to the Post, "[S]ome senators, particularly those on the [Senate] Appropriations Committee, are threatening to add spending for domestic causes," moves that "would require the House to reconsider the legislation," likely after the July 4 recess (Washington Post, 6/19).

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle "signaled Bush would sign the measure," which he said would remain within the spending limits requested by the president, the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports (Taylor, AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, 6/19).