The Hindu Business Line : Hold-up in Spending Bill; extra H-1 B visas may take a while

IT is going to take some more time for the omnibus spending Bill to reach the White House for the President's signature. And in this bill is tucked away the provision for an extra 20,000 H-1B visas for graduates holding Master's and Ph.D's from American educational institutions.

The hold-up has to do with a provision on taxpayer privacy.

Law makers who thought that they could spend some extra time over the Thanksgiving holidays by voting on the massive $388 billion Spending Bill last Saturday are going to come back today to clear an emergency spending bill to keep the Government running after December 3.

It will not be before December 6 or later before Congress, returning from the Thanksgiving recess, is able to resolve the issue.

Bizarre as it may seem, the mistake was "caught" by staffers of a Democratic Senator only hours to go before the vote Saturday in the Senate.

Lawmakers from both Houses "thought" that the particular item would have been deleted in the final draft before the vote.

It did not happen and the office of Senator Mr Kent Conrad found the particular tax provision on page 1112 of a 3600 page bill.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Republican duels" helped to create the taxpayer snafu - apparently the House Appropriations Committee only wanted extra authority to visit Internal Revenue Service facilities to oversee its operations and not to get into individual taxpayer records.

But the panel was so keen on keeping this writing to itself and away from the Ways and Means Committee that it ended up in a poorly drafted provision, which is now haunting and embarrassing the Republicans.

Now both the Republican leadership and the IRS want the particular provision out before a new vote is taken.

But the Republicans have had an earful in the last few days including political posturing by the Democratic leadership, which would not agree to a voice vote on an emergency spending measure. Accusing the Grand Old Party of a "Saturday night massacre on Americans' privacy", the House Minority Leader, Ms Nancy Pelosi called "this arrogance of power is part of a pattern of abuse" and that the "assault" on the tax-payer was "not a simple mistake".

There is no danger to the omnibus Spending Bill that has the provision on the H-1Bs and the L-1 visas; the only thing is that the bill is taking more time winding its way down to Pennsylvania Avenue.

The anticipation is that the bill will be in the President's desk in early December.

But in all the hoopla over the taxpayer provision, the question that has been posed is whether lawmakers are aware of all the "goodies" in the massive spending bill. In fact members of Congress very often pride about the value of the projects they bring home, especially to their constituencies.

The New York Times has a sampling of what all there is by way of "pet projects" - how about $236,000 for blueberry research in Maine and $133,000 for maple research in Vermont?