Republican Reps. Rob Bishop and Chris Cannon supported the budget bill during a 5 a.m. vote Monday.
"Lopping off spending at some arbitrary number does nothing to rein in the out-of-control spending spree when there are no spending controls in place and there is no evidence of pay-as-you-go to protect even more soaring debt," Matheson said.
The budget bill, which has drawn Democratic fire for its reduction to the growth of social services, passed on a near-party-line vote of 212-206. The bill cuts the federal budget growth by $40 billion over five years, and marks the first time in eight years Congress has slowed the growth of federal benefits programs.
Cannon said the bill was a step toward getting "our fiscal house in order."
"We had to make tough choices, but our children's future depends on us meeting long-term spending challenges head-on," Cannon said.
Likewise, Bishop said he wanted more savings in the bill, but reinforced his point that the bill doesn't cut funding, just slows the growth of some programs.
"I'm not willing to pass along to my kids the kinds of deficits we're looking at if we don't start having some fiscal discipline," Bishop said. "This is the right thing to do. . . . But hopefully we've only just begun."
In other early morning votes, which came after a weekend of work when Congress had planned to be adjourned for the holidays, the House also approved two fiscal bills for the Department of Defense, including one creating wilderness in western Utah near a proposed nuclear waste storage site. The designation is meant to stymie efforts by some energy companies to temporarily store the waste in the Beehive State.
All three of Utah's congressmen voted for the defense bills.
The House delegation also unanimously supported a bill on cord blood stem cells, an effort toward creating a depository of the stem cells taken from placentas so that patients can more easily be linked to a possible match.
The measure Ð- the Senate version of which is sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah - received no opposing votes, though Democrats initially opposed a vote on the bill because they wanted a vote on the more controversial embryonic stem cell legislation.
Also included in the Defense spending bill was $4 million, pushed by Matheson, for ongoing research for Utah-based projects, including a $1 million each for: a pain therapy program that seeks to provide an alternative for treating soldiers' chronic pain; work on a navigation system to protect the safety of surface ships and submarines; creation of a facility in St. George to produce solar cells for defense and NASA satellites; and research into a computer display meant to reduce motion sickness for soldiers in the field.
tburr@sltrib.com
How they voted:
* Budget reconciliation
Bishop: Yes
Cannon: Yes
Matheson: No
* Department of Defense fiscal appropriations
Bishop: Yes
Cannon: Yes
Matheson: Yes
* Department of Defense fiscal authorization
Bishop: Yes
Cannon: Yes
Matheson: Yes
* Cord blood stem cell databank:
Bishop: Yes
Cannon: Yes
Matheson: Yes
