Lawmakers battle

Lawmakers battle over busting budget to pay for veterans health care

By SARAH FERRIS and JENNIFER SCHOLTES

Spooking House conservatives and risking a presidential veto, Senate spending leaders are proposing to blow past budget limits to fund a popular private health care program for military veterans.

Minutes before they were to meet on Thursday, congressional appropriators canceled their first public conference talk that had been intended to settle differences in three of the 12 annual spending bills President Donald Trump must sign by Sept. 30 to avert a government shutdown. One of the three provides for spending on veterans.

The 11th-hour cancellation came amid a cross-Congress showdown over how to pay for a program that allows some veterans to spend taxpayer money on private doctors and hospitals. The question is whether to break budget limits, known as caps, to come up with the cash.

“They canceled the meeting. But it’s all about the VA,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told reporters Thursday, apparently referring to GOP leaders. “Do we break the caps? Do we prorate everything else? Do we cut other veterans programs to fund this? We got a shortfall, and we got to work it out. And we’re not there yet.”

Congress needs to approve $1.6 billion for fiscal 2019, plus nearly $18.2 billion more in the two years thereafter, to fully fund what has been authorized for the VA Choice program and its successor within the new VA Mission Act.

The suggestion that Congress “break the caps” set by the budget deal, H.R. 1892 (115), struck this year is already irking House conservatives, who would be loath to vote on any final spending bill that goes above those limits — even in the face of an impending shutdown this fall. The idea likely would not play well, either, in talks with a White House that was already seen as surprisingly conciliatory in signing that grand budget deal.

Money for veterans programs comes with special political protections, however, since policymakers want to avoid the uncomfortable optics of fighting funding for those who have served in the military. And top Democrats are already trying to use that perception to their advantage.

“You don’t go to a veterans assembly and say, ‘We’re not going to help the veterans,’” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D- Vt.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Thursday.

The administration has been heavily involved in discussions for weeks. The White House budget office has argued that any extra VA money would be akin to breaking this year’s budget deal.

“It’s obviously critically important to give veterans the resources they need, and we think that can happen inside the existing caps,” according to a senior administration official.

Leahy planned to offer an amendment during the conference meeting that would have added funding for the veterans health care program. The meeting was then postponed, he said, because negotiators didn’t want to go on record against doling out that cash. A GOP aide said that Republicans weren't expecting any amendments in Thursday's meeting, the first time negotiators would meet face-to-face.

“A lot of the people were, I think, concerned, I’m told, that they’d have to vote today,” Leahy said.

The issue isn’t as simple as supporting or opposing money for VA Choice, though.

The funding problem began last month, when Congress enacted a bill, S. 2372 (115), that created a budget gap by switching the program’s community care services from the mandatory side of the ledger to the discretionary side.

Democrats — as well as some Republican appropriatiors — are in favor of exempting the new money from Congress’ strict spending caps. But many Republicans, including White House officials, say the cash should come out of the government's already-determined budget, even if that means trimming the toplines for other programs.

That means Congress would need to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from other programs into the veterans health care program, which until this year, was funded automatically.

For their part, House lawmakers have already agreed to pay for part of the program without blowing through budget limits. The veterans spending bill, H.R. 5786 (115), that the House passed last month as part of a three-bill minibus would fully fund the program for fiscal 2019.

In a statement to POLITICO on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan called out Leahy by name, saying the Senate spending bill “neglected” to fund the VA program, despite the House’s action.

“This attack is the height of hypocrisy,” said a senior House GOP aide. “Democrats are scrambling to cover up the fact they have not kept their promises as the House did.”

House GOP leaders have repeatedly refused to adjust Congress’ current spending cap to pay for the additional discretionary spending on the veterans program. Instead, Republicans agreed to pitch in that $1.1 billion by reshuffling existing money from the House’s funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

Their Democratic counterparts, led by Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, have protested the move, arguing that it will shortchange other domestic programs. Lowey’s own caps-busting amendment was rejected by the spending committee.

The fight over the budget caps has been long simmering and nearly broke out into the open earlier this summer.

Shelby had long backed Leahy’s amendment to surpass the caps, but the GOP chairman was forced to shelve his support for bringing it to the floor at the last minute after several conservatives raised issues with it, according to Senate aides.

Shelby even declared on the Senate floor in May that he would support a plan that exceeds the caps, warning that Congress' newest version of the veterans law authorized large sums of spending “without providing any way to pay for it under the spending caps.”

“Fortunately, there is existing law and ample precedent for adjusting spending caps to reflect changes resulting from a shift in mandatory spending to discretionary spending,” Shelby said on the floor.