House passes massive budget bill

WASHINGTON - Democrats controlling the House muscled through legislation last night that would freeze the budgets of most Cabinet departments and fund the war in Afghanistan for another year.

The bill would cap the agencies' annual operating budgets at the $1.2 trillion approved for the recently finished budget year - a $46-billion cut of more than 3 percent from President Barack Obama's request.

It includes $159 billion to prosecute the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq next year.

The 423-page measure, opposed by Republicans, conservative Democrats and some anti-war lawmakers, narrowly passed by a 212-206 vote. The budget-freeze bill wraps a dozen unfinished spending bills into a single measure.

The bill, combined with a massive measure to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, extend unemployment benefits and cut the payroll tax, represents the bulk of Congress' unfinished work as the lame-duck session approaches its close.

There are many exceptions to the freeze. Health care programs for veterans and the military would get a boost, and the measure adds $5.7 billion to the Pell Grant program for low-income college students to maintain the maximum grant at $5,550. People serving in the military would get a 1.4 percent pay raise, but civilian federal workers would have their salaries frozen, as requested by Obama last week.

Senate Democrats are working on a different approach that would provide slightly more money and would include thousands of pet projects sought by lawmakers. It's unclear whether that measure can get enough support from GOP old-timers to survive a filibuster by party conservatives. The House bill is free of such earmarks.

The measure passed over Republican protests that it still spends too much money and that it caps an unprecedented collapse of the federal budget process in which not a single one of the 12 annual spending bills has yet passed Congress. Ten of 12 House bills haven't even been made public.

House Republicans wanted a short-term measure to punt the unfinished budget business into next year, when they will assume the majority and have more leverage to seek concessions from Obama on spending.