House OKs lands bill as spending continues to grow

WASHINGTON - The House emphatically approved a compromise $18.8 billion Interior Department measure on Tuesday that would establish a historic land conservation program, even as budget bargainers continued to drive the price tag of spending bills skyward.

The House used a lopsided 348-69 vote to send the Interior bill to the Senate, where passage was considered likely. It seemed destined to become the third of the 13 spending bills for the 2001 fiscal year, which began on Sunday, that President Clinton will sign into law.

''This agreement is a major step toward ensuring communities the resources they need to protect their most precious lands - from neighborhood parks to threatened farmland to pristine coastal areas,'' Clinton said in a written statement.

The vote was part of a flurry in which lawmakers, eyeing the approaching presidential and congressional elections, moved ahead on spending bills. White House and Capitol Hill bargainers shook hands on a $58 billion transportation bill that would create a national drunken driving standard, and neared deals on an even larger measure for veterans, housing, environmental and science programs and a separate agriculture bill.

The Interior measure's popularity was due partly to the new land program. It would set aside $1.6 billion this year - more than double last year's total - and up to $12 billion over the next six years for buying federal, state and local park lands, maintaining existing parks, wildlife protection and other initiatives.

Opponents included conservatives, who said people might be forced to sell land to the government, as well as liberals, who argued the measure was too timid. In May, the House approved a 15-year version of the measure that guaranteed that $45 billion would be spent for conservation, but that bill stalled in the Senate.

The Interior measure also provided $105 million for the often-controversial National Endowment for the Arts - a $7 million boost that was the agency's first significant budget increase since Republicans took over Congress in 1995.

The overall bill was the latest example of how, with massive federal surpluses, lawmakers have been bidding up the cost of spending measures in their rush to make compromises and go home for re-election campaigns.

The bill's $18.8 billion total was at least $3 billion bigger than earlier House and Senate versions of the measure, and $2.5 billion more than Clinton sought. Even so, Republicans continued to blame him.

''We're working all day long, 24/7, to hold back these demands,'' House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said of lawmakers' spending requests. ''That's why it's so frustrating when he comes back and asks even more.''

The Interior bill also included $348 million for the Internal Revenue Service, counterterrorism, and other programs that Clinton was seeking. That money is aimed at allowing Senate passage, and Clinton's approval, of a separate $33 billion bill financing the Treasury Department and Congress' own operations.

The transportation bill, which Congress hopes to approve this week with Clinton's support, follows the same pattern. Its $58 billion exceeded Clinton's request by $3.3 billion and was larger than what the House and Senate initially approved.

The compromise included $1.4 billion for ''miscellaneous highways'' and $720 million more for a Federal Highway Administration ''emergency relief program'' that were not in the earlier versions.

Each of the three other bills Congress has sent Clinton - financing the Pentagon, military construction, and energy and water projects - have exceeded the president's spending requests, by a total of $4.4 billion.

Clinton has promised to veto the energy-water bill because it would scuttle administration plans to ease controlled flows on the Missouri Rivers, a fight pitting environmental advocates against downstream commercial interests.

The transportation measure would penalize states that don't enact a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level as the standard for drunken driving. If any of the 32 states that have a more lenient 0.10 percent level don't adopt the stricter standard, they would lose up to 8 percent of their federal highway aid by 2007.

The bill would also block the administration from issuing new rules this year to reduce the number of hours truckers may drive daily. The administration wanted to reduce the maximum number of daily driving hours from 16 to 12.

Meanwhile, with a measure that has kept agencies open for the first six days of fiscal 2001 about to expire, the House voted 415-1 to extend that through Oct. 14. Its approval by the Senate and signature by Clinton is considered certain.