Democrats Seek Session With Bush on Spending

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Democrats Seek Session With Bush on Spending


By ROBERT PEAR
Published: July 24, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 23 — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, have asked for a meeting with President Bush to see if they can work out an agreement on spending bills for the fiscal year that begins in 10 weeks. But lawmakers from both parties said they saw no obvious way to overcome the current stalemate with the White House.

The House has passed 8 of the 12 regular appropriations bills for 2008, and Mr. Bush threatened to veto 5 of them, on the ground that they called for “an irresponsible and excessive level of spending.”

On Monday, as the House took up another spending bill, dealing with transportation and housing programs, the White House issued another veto threat. The Senate, which has not passed any of the 12 bills, plans to begin considering the first one, for the Department of Homeland Security, on Tuesday.

In a letter to the president, Ms. Pelosi of California and Mr. Reid of Nevada said they hoped to reach an agreement with the White House to “avoid a protracted battle over relatively small differences.” The disagreement, they said, involves less than 1 percent of the federal budget, about $22 billion in a budget of $2.9 trillion.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/washington/24spend.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=washington&adxnnlx=1185282346-HEWzpBUzJ8XREwTujpV7ag&oref=slogin