WASHINGTON — Weeks after the Veterans Affairs Department acknowledged a major shortfall in its health-care budget, members of the House and Senate agreed yesterday to provide $1.5 billion to close the gap.

Negotiators for the two chambers settled on the amount already approved by the Senate — which comes on top of $28 billion already approved for the budget year ending Sept. 30 — after key House lawmakers said they had lost faith in the VA's estimates. A final vote is expected this week.

The additional money is needed to correct the VA's underestimation of the number of veterans seeking care as well as increased costs of treatment and long-term care.

Senate panel backs

tough pension rules

The Senate Finance Committee yesterday approved a bill that would toughen pension-funding rules but grant special relief to airlines.

The bill, approved on a voice vote, also would make it easier in the future for employers to convert traditional pensions into "hybrid" cash-balance plans, from which employees usually withdraw lump sums instead of receiving regular payments.

The bill would increase the premiums that employers pay to the government's pension-insurance agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., and would require them to meet funding targets based on plan liabilities, calculated using higher interest rates for benefits that are payable soon and lower rates for those due in the future.

Airlines would get 14 years to pay off underfunding in their pension plans, a change that lawmakers hope will ease the pressure on the PBGC and a record deficit topping $20 billion.

King memorial

wins support

House Republicans agreed to subsidize a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall as lawmakers closed out final agreements on the first two spending bills for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

Negotiators also approved a significant cut to the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency and provided what they hope will be the final payment on a $500 million-plus addition to the U.S. Capitol complex.

The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation would have to raise an additional $10 million in private money before it could receive the federal grant. The group has already raised more than $40 million for the memorial to the slain civil-rights leader.

Huge highway bill

due for vote soon

A massive highway and mass-transit bill that Congress has spent two years trying to compile could be ready for a vote as early as today, according to congressional aides.

The six-year, $286.5 billion measure includes more than $50 billion for mass-transit projects and $6 billion for safety programs.

The last highway act expired in September 2003, and Congress has had to pass 10 temporary extensions.

Also

Presidential succession: The Senate yesterday approved a bill to raise the homeland-security secretary from last to eighth place in the presidential line of succession, just after the attorney general.

Bush adviser: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday unanimously approved the nomination of Karen Hughes, a political adviser to President Bush, as the State Department's top public-relations official.

Compiled from The Associated Press and The Washington Post