President Bush is soon expected to veto a congressionally approved version of the Labor/Health and Human Services/Education (Labor/HHS) appropriations bill, which funds an array of human needs programs. It is still uncertain if there is enough support in the House to override the president's veto. Meanwhile, enough Republican opposition remains to a proposed reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that the months-old conflict over the program drags on. The Labor/HHS appropriations bill is likely to be the first piece of appropriations legislation sent to the president during the Fiscal Year 2008 budget cycle. It will probably be part of a two-bill package that also includes funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Advocacy groups are pushing to send the package to the president on Veteran's Day (Nov. 12); in order to meet this deadline, the House may vote as early as today (Nov. 6), with the Senate expected to follow shortly thereafter. The $150 billion Labor/HHS bill funds the Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor Departments, which hold a wide array of human needs programs, from Head Start and the National Institutes of Health to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and college loan programs. The Senate-passed version contains $8.4 billion more than the president's request, which called for drastic cuts (for more details on the president's proposed cuts, see either the Coalition on Human Needs' analysis or the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' analysis). The Senate passed the measure on a 75-19 vote on Oct. 23, while the House passed its version in July, 276-140. The margin of the Senate vote was large enough to override a potential presidential veto, but the House vote fell just short. The Labor/HHS appropriations bill may get more support by being paired with the $65 billion Veterans/Military Construction appropriations bill, which passed with nearly unanimous approval in both the House and Senate. The programs covered under this bill received a significant boost in proposed funding following the revelation of poor conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC. The president is all but certain to veto the combined bill. Congress will then vote on whether to override the president's veto, which is, despite solid majority support in both chambers, no easy task. It takes a two-thirds majority of voting members in both the House and the Senate to override a veto. Congress has yet to override a presidential veto in 2007, as the House has repeatedly failed to override the president's veto of bills to increase funding for SCHIP. If Congress does not override the president's veto, it will likely be forced to reduce funding for social programs covered by the Labor/HHS appropriations bill, and other appropriations legislation may also see funding reductions. The president has threatened to veto eight other FY 2008 appropriations bills that he says contain excessive levels of spending. Regardless of whether or not the dual Labor/HHS-Veterans appropriations bill is enacted, a continuing resolution (CR) will have to be enacted before Nov. 16 to keep funding the federal government. Conflict over SCHIP Continues While the showdown over appropriations has unfolded, Congress has attempted to resolve the drawn-out conflict over the $35 billion SCHIP reauthorization through revisions to eligibility standards and funding incentives. But the new parts of the bill did not substantially change which members supported it in either the House or the Senate. It remains unclear how the conflict over the SCHIP reauthorization will be resolved. The new version of the SCHIP bill retained a funding increase of $35 billion over five years that was paid for by a 61-cent cigarette tax increase. Changes in the new legislation include additional incentives to target funding to low-income children and limited eligibility for children in families whose incomes were below 300 percent of the poverty line (about $60,000 annually for a family of four (see this Center on Budget and Policy Priorities paper for more on the changes)). The changes were made to attract more Republican support in the House, since many Republicans cited those issues as reasons they opposed they bill when it was first considered. However, the vote in the House and Senate did not significantly shift. The Senate vote was 65-30, and the House vote was 265-142. Because the initial votes in the House and Senate on the two different versions were so similar, Democrats in Congress may decide not to send this bill to the president. It is unlikely votes to override a second expected presidential veto will differ from the first. It is unclear what will happen next to resolve the conflict over the SCHIP bill. Senate negotiators have been working on a bill to attract the 15-20 additional votes needed in the House to override a veto. SCHIP supporters are holding firm on the $35 billion funding level and the cigarette tax-revenue raiser. Although the Bush administration recently claimed to be open to more funding than the meager $5 billion increase the president proposed in his budget, it has now taken issue with the cigarette tax provision. Until the conflict is resolved, the SCHIP program will likely be extended in the next extension of the CR, which is currently being designed to run through Dec. 14.