SENATE ADOPTS FY2004 LABOR-HHS-EDUCATION BILL

September 12, 2003

By a vote of 94-0 the Senate on September 10 passed its version of H.R. 2660, the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004. In the process, however, the Senate adopted a controversial overtime pay amendment that puts the measure on a collision course with the president. The $138 billion bill will now be the subject of a joint House-Senate conference, where lawmakers will try to reconcile their differences before sending the measure to President Bush.

Passage of the legislation came after seven days of partisan, often bitter debate over national spending priorities.

Shortly before the final vote, the Senate failed to waive a point of order against the Specter-Harkin-Feinstein amendment, which proposed adding $1.5 billion to the National Institutes of Health, raising the agency's total funding to $29.4 billion. The vote of 52 to 43 fell 8 votes short of the 60 votes needed to waive Senate budget rules on amendments of this type. In a last minute change, the amendment would have declared the additional $1.5 billion emergency funding not subject to the subcommittee's spending cap. Although Appropriations chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) and a number of other Republicans voted to waive the point of order against the amendment, several Democratic members of the budget committee voted against waiving the rules, effectively blocking the amendment's passage.

The overtime pay amendment, sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), would prevent the Labor Department from issuing a proposed regulation that would make it easier for employers to classify workers as exempt from overtime eligibility. Shortly before the House defeated a similar amendment earlier this summer on a 213-211 vote, the Bush administration issued a warning that the president would veto any legislation that attempted to block the new overtime rules. Nevertheless, six Republican senators joined Democrats in passing the amendment.

Business groups, which overwhelmingly support the proposed rule change, blasted the Senate vote, saying that Democratic estimates about the number of workers who would lose overtime are inflated. The Labor Department said the rule change will cause 644,000 workers to lose overtime pay, but the Economic Policy Institute estimates that 8 million will lose eligibility for overtime.

Democrats succeeded in adding one other amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education bill. An amendment sponsored by Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey to restore proposed cuts in college student aid programs.

There is no word yet on when House-Senate conferees will meet to resolve their differences on this bill. But by most accounts, this process could extend into late November or perhaps December.