Yay! House doesn’t pass budget, or Boo, House doesn’t pass this budget

REVOLT: Critical Spending Bill Goes Down In The House
In a dramatic rebuke of conservative leadership, the House has defeated the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education spending bill for Fiscal Year 2006. This year’s bill, which contains one-third of all domestic spending, calls for deep cuts in critical government programs.
Think Progress.com

House Labor, Health and Human Services

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), has angered colleagues facing reelection in 2006 by cutting $1 billion in pet projects from his subcommittee’s spending bill to pay for programs popular with Democrats and centrist Republicans.

Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee, who, like Specter, is a centrist Republican, agreed to the $1 billion in project cuts after it became clear that Senate negotiators would not support the bill otherwise, said a House GOP aide familiar with the negotiations. Regula is a member of the Main Street Republican Partnership, a coalition of Senate and House Republican centrists.

“We put back $175 million into LIHEAP, we put more money into CDC, we put money into community health centers,” said Specter. “Those are the funds from the billion dollars in earmarks.”

The savings will be used to pay for the fight against the global spread of AIDS; to increase funding for LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; and to fund new construction of health-preparedness facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said a House GOP aide familiar with the legislation.
The pet-project money will also be used to increase Title 1 education spending on schools with high proportions of poor and disadvantaged children and to increase spending on special education, said the House GOP aide.