WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate increased funds for fighting wildfires by $400 million Tuesday, nearly doubling fire suppression money in a $20 billion Interior Department spending bill.
``These dollars will help mitigate the costs of fighting the terrible fires this season,'' said Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont. ``Now we need to find a long-term solution to this problem so we're not facing it year after year.''
The wildfire funds will go toward alleviating the chronic problem of the Interior Department and the Forest Service having to borrow money every year from other accounts because they don't have enough to cover the cost of firefighting.
This year the two agencies are expected to borrow $850 million to pay for past firefighting efforts and to combat fires that burned some 3 million acres this year.
House and Senate negotiators this month have already agreed to include $319 million for firefighting as part of a separate $937 million emergency package of aid for victims of natural disasters.
Burns said the $400 million in new firefighting money could change - either increasing or decreasing - as the two chambers work out their differences on the Interior spending bill. The House-passed bill provided $690 million for fire suppression, while the original Senate bill had $514 million.
Work on the Interior bill, which passed the Senate by a voice vote, was completed as senators moved toward a tentative agreement on President Bush's ``Healthy Forest'' initiative, a measure to ease environmental restrictions on logging and speed thinning projects in national forests to reduce the danger of wildfire.
The deal would allow thinning on about 20 million acres of fire-prone national forests. Aides said the agreement, crafted so as to answer some of the concerns of environmental groups that it would allow timber companies to harvest old growth forests, was not finished in time to combine it with the spending bill.
The spending bill, for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, also includes $2.3 billion for the National Park Service, $1.72 billion for the Bureau of Land Management and $2.3 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
It also funds related agencies such as the Smithsonian Institution, at $578 million, and the National Endowment for the Arts, at $117 million.
The Senate approved, on a 92-4 vote, an amendment offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to ban commercial advertising at events staged on the National Mall.
Bingaman said his measure was in response to the Interior Department's decision to permit a football and music festival on the Mall this month sponsored by the National Football League and Pepsi and including large banners advertising Pepsi and other products.
The Interior Department and the National Park Service, Bingaman said, ``have bent over backwards to accommodate corporate interests that wanted to use the Mall for commercial purposes.''
The Senate rejected two efforts by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota to increase funds for Indian health programs. One amendment would have added $292 million for the Indian Health Service, while the second would have transferred $79 million from funds to reorganize the Bureau of Indian Affairs to health programs.
Daschle said the federal government's health spending per capita is twice as much for federal prisoners as it is for Indians, and it is a double standard to say that there isn't enough money for Indian health when Congress is spending billions to rebuild Iraq.
The Senate also voted against an effort by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, that would have shut off money for the administration's campaign to subject jobs now done by federal workers to private competition. The House-passed bill has language blocking ``competitive sourcing,'' but the administration has warned that Bush would veto the bill if such language is not removed.
