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Washington • Republicans controlling the powerful House Appropriations panel Wednesday adopted a sweeping spending bill that seeks to protect popular programs like health research, drug treatment and AIDS prevention but slashes education grants and funding for family-planning centers and community-service programs.
The $153 billion measure is at the center of a battle over how to respond to the return of automatic spending cuts known as sequestration. Republicans controlling Congress have moved to exempt the Pentagon from sequestration by using an accounting loophole to add almost $40 billion to its budget.
President Barack Obama is demanding equal increases for domestic programs as a condition for signing any of the appropriations bills.
The GOP bill would provide almost $15 billion less than requested by Obama for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and cuts almost $4 billion from current levels.
The measure also seeks to block implementation of Obama's health care law and cuts funding for anti-smoking programs by more than half. It would eliminate a $286 million family-planning program and slash a teen-pregnancy prevention program while requiring half of the remaining funding, just $20 million, be directed to abstinence-only programs.
But chief bill author Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., would award the National Institutes of Health, responsible for research into cutting-edge cures, a $1.1 billion increase, or almost 4 percent. He also maintains funding for the Centers for Disease Control, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, child-care block grants and offers modest new initiatives targeted at education for preschoolers, minorities and the disabled.
Democrats mounted a daylong assault on the measure only to see it advance on a 30-21 party-line tally.
"The bill is an affront to women, families and all hardworking Americans. It would backtrack on federal efforts to improve schools and help teachers, undermine public health and place Americans' financial security at risk," said top panel Democrat Rep. Nita Lowey of New York.
At Wednesday's session, the GOP-led panel rejected Democratic amendments to add funding for various programs, eliminate the requirement for abstinence-only teen pregnancy programs and remove a longstanding provision that has been interpreted to block the Centers for Disease Control from conducting research into studying the causes of gun violence.