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Veto threatened if rider blocking monument creation not removed
WASHINGTON - Senior White House officials warned Thursday that they would recommend President Clinton veto a congressional spending bill unless House Republicans remove a provision that would block creation of several national monuments, including one at Hanford. The warning came in a letter to the chairman and ranking Democrat of the House Appropriations Committee, which approved the $14.6 billion interior spending bill on a mostly party-line vote. The action set up a showdown on the House floor sometime this summer as Democrats say they will make a major effort to strip the national monument ban and other so-called riders from the bill. "We think we have a shot there," Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said after the Appropriations Committee meeting. Dicks, a senior Democrat on the committee, said no effort was made to delete the riders Thursday because Democrats hope to pick up support from moderate Republicans when the bill comes before the full House. "Strategically, we think we can defeat this bill," Dicks said. Republicans, gearing for a fight, said they also preferred to wait until the measure reached the House floor before engaging in a full-blown debate. "This has to do with policy," said Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, chairman of the House interior appropriations committee. "It goes to the heart of constitutional questions involving Congress and the executive branch." While the provision doesn't specifically name the Hanford Reach, it would prohibit the use of funds for the "design, planning or management" of a national monument created since 1999 under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The provision would bar the creation of any new monuments and could leave in doubt the future of the new monuments Clinton has created in the past year. During a recent visit to the Tri-Cities, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt all but endorsed the idea of protecting the Reach as a national monument. The 51-mile Reach, the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River in the United States, provides critical spawning habit for one of the region's healthiest runs of wild salmon. In warning of a possible veto, Jacob Lew, director of the White House budget office, said the bill would "undermine" long-standing presidential authority to designate national monuments. "It represents a back-door attempt to nullify five recent designations, which the American public has strongly endorsed, and to prevent the president from moving decisively in the future to protect and preserve other sites for future generations," Lew said in his letter to the committee chairman, Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., and the ranking Democrat, Wisconsin Rep. David Obey. Lew said the administration also objected to a rider that would block final implementation of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Project, a seven-year, $50 million study designed to better coordinate protection of endangered species on federal lands in the region. "The rider would halt the improvement in federal land management and agency environmental management in the Columbia River Basin to protect forestland, wildlife and fish habitat," Lew wrote. In addition, Lew said the administration also was upset because the bill provided $300 million less in funding than last year's version and was $1.3 billion below the president's budget request. The bill provides funding for the Forest Service, the Department of Interior and such other agencies as the Smithsonian and the National Endowment for the Arts. Lew said the current bill includes steep cuts in funding for the White House's program to purchase additional federal lands and Indian health care. "The committee's failure to fund key programs sufficiently and its inclusion of damaging riders would lead the president's senior advisers to recommend a veto if the bill was presented to the president in its current form," Lew wrote. Dicks said he wasn't at all surprised by the White House response. "This bill is in serious trouble," he said. "As we have seen in the past, riders such as these will draw a veto faster than anything else." | ||