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GOP-Run Congress Shows Taste for Spending
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| Contributor | Gerald Farinas |
| Last Edited | Gerald Farinas Mar 31, 2004 09:53pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | News Service - Associated Press |
| News Date | Wednesday, March 31, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | GOP-Run Congress Shows Taste for Spending
The Honolulu Advertiser
The Republican-run Congress is showing its desire to spend billions of extra dollars for highways, welfare and civil servants even as party leaders promote tight spending restraints in the $2.4 trillion budget they are writing. While the need to control spending is a Republican tenet, the party has not always found it an easy principle to translate into reality. In recent months, Bush and the GOP-dominated Congress have enacted major spending increases for Medicare, farmers and war - and the temptation to bring extra dollars home is only heightened with elections barely seven months away.
The House overwhelmingly approved a nonbinding measure Wednesday backing a 3.5 percent pay raise next year for the government's civilian workers, the same amount President Bush proposed for members of the military. Should that increase become law, it would cost $2.2 billion more than the 1.5 percent raise for civilians that Bush recommended. House leaders were hoping for approval this week of a $275 billion, six-year highway bill that has drawn a veto threat from White House aides because they consider it too expensive. The widely popular election-year measure would spend at least $19 billion more than the White House wants. On Tuesday, the Senate voted 78-20 to increase child-care spending for welfare recipients by $6 billion over the next five years. Thirty-one of the Senate's 51 Republicans, including Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., voted for the measure despite opposition by the administration. |
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