
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 28, 1994                   TAG: 9409290026
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOUSE APPROVES BILLS TO FREEZE PAY, FUND ARTS

The House agreed Tuesday to freeze congressional pay for a second straight year and fund the National Endowment for the Arts, a favorite target of conservatives.

The $23.5 billion Treasury, Postal Service and General Government budget for fiscal 1995 includes a 2.6 percent cost-of-living pay raise for federal workers.

But with anti-Washington sentiment running high this election year, the lawmakers included language in the bill barring any increase in their $133,600 salaries. Federal judges, Cabinet and subcabinet officers and the vice president also are excluded from the pay raise.

All of Virginia's Republican representatives, including Bob Goodlatte of Roanoke, voted for the measure. Democratic representatives voting for the bill were Rick Boucher of Abingdon; L.F. Payne of Nelson County; Owen Pickett of Virginia Beach; James Moran of Alexandria; and Norman Sisisky of Petersburg. Democrats not voting were Leslie L. Byrne of Fairfax and Robert C. Scott of Newport News.

As part of the $13.6 billion Interior Department bill, the National Endowment for the Arts was budgeted $168 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. It was $3 million less than the administration requested but still a victory for the much-beleaguered agency, which funds art and cultural programs.

As in past years, conservatives sought to eliminate NEA funding or make sharp cuts, arguing that the NEA has sponsored programs with pornographic or distasteful themes.

The Interior spending bill was passed on a voice vote.

The House approved the Treasury bill, by a 360-53 vote, only after trimming $157 million from the same House-Senate compromise bill it rejected Thursday.

Lawmakers complained that the compromise plan had included a Senate plan to increase spending on new federal construction by more than $200 million.

After the vote, House-Senate conferees met again and agreed to cut appropriations for the General Service Administration's Federal Buildings Fund from $467 million to $310 million.

Both the Treasury and Interior bills need Senate approval before going to the president for signing.

by CNB