Senate OKs budget bill with caps set by Bush

[Robbien]

Washington - The Senate on Wednesday passed a $464 billion spending bill that closes out last year's unfinished budget business while providing clues about how the new Democratic Congress and President Bush will do business.

The bill, passed 81-15, sticks to Bush's overall budget caps but finds numerous ways around them to add to programs favored by lawmakers, such as education, health care, food inspection and mine safety.

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The mammoth bill pulls together nine unfinished spending bills funding foreign aid and every domestic agency budget except the Homeland Security Department.

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Next up is Bush's $100 billion Iraq and Afghanistan war funding request, which is widely expected to draw Democratic extras such as $4 billion or so in farm disaster aid when the appropriations committees debate it next month. The White House wants to keep the Iraq funding bill as free as possible from such add-ons, but it is likely to have to accept some Democratic priorities as the price of getting the bill to his desk.

Then will come the fiscal 2008 appropriations cycle, during which Democrats are certain to transfer some of the proposed $50 billion-plus increase for the Pentagon budget - not including war costs - to domestic programs, which are almost frozen under Bush's budget.

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