WASHINGTON (AP) – House and Senate negotiators made modest changes to a major spending bill that would freeze or cut back a wide variety of education and social programs in hopes of successfully capping a GOP drive to halt the growth of most domestic agencies’ budgets.

An earlier version of the measure, which would provide $602 billion for a broad spectrum of health, education and labor programs, was defeated on the House floor last month amid opposition from GOP moderates and rural lawmakers, among others. The rural lawmakers were unhappy with cuts to a variety of programs aimed at improving rural health care.

The bill contains $142.5 billion at lawmakers’ discretion for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, with the bulk of the rest of the funds being automatic payments to the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

To revive the measure, senior House Appropriations Committee Republicans such as Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio and Jerry Lewis of California, the committee’s chairman, shifted $90 million into rural health programs such as grants for community health centers and funding for training and support programs designed to encourage more physicians to practice in rural areas.

The add-ons were financed by a cut of $120 million in pandemic preparedness funds. That cut, in turn, may be filled in when lawmakers address President Bush’s $7 billion request to combat bird flu.

The Appropriations Committee also lost a turf battle with the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who insisted negotiators drop a provision to block Medicare beneficiaries from obtaining drugs for erectile disfunction through the government next year. The ban is already in place for 2007 and beyond, but Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., objected to extending it to 2006 because some providers of the Medicare drug benefit had already entered into contracts to provide the drugs next year.

The changes were minor at best and left intact the core of the bill defeated by the House.

The bill is one of the most thrifty spending measures in recent memory. The pending version contains about 1 percent less than last year in real terms for programs up to the discretion of lawmakers after accounting for the new cost of administering the Medicare prescription drug program. Another 1 percentage point across-the-board cut will essentially erase what few spending increases are included in the bill.

Budgets for special education and for the National Institutes of Health are essentially frozen and steep cuts remain in grant programs for medical training, community colleges, rural health care and state and local health departments, when compared with spending for the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

“Here we are going home for Christmas and we’re giving the least fortunate among us more lumps of coal in their stockings,’ said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

On education, the measure would cut spending on Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative by about 3 percent after years of healthy increases.

The measure still faces close votes in both the House and the Senate and passage of the latest compromise by both House and Senate is no sure thing. House GOP leaders are cautiously optimistic that a repeat of last month’s debacle can be avoided. But Senate GOP moderates are unhappy with the bill, and the defection of only six Republicans could sink it in that chamber.

Completion of the labor, health and education bill leaves only the defense measure remaining for Congress to complete before adjourning for the year. That must-pass measure is shaping up as a catchall bill that will carry new funds for hurricane relief and to prevent the spread of avian flu.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., has vowed to add billions of dollars to President Bush’s request to shift $17.1 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to other agencies for longer-term rebuilding projects. Cochran especially wants to help homeowners who lived outside of traditional flood plains – and therefore lacked flood insurance – who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge.

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