With less than one week before the current continuing resolution is scheduled to expire, congressional negotiators are still far away from deals on several thorny appropriations issues--and one deal that fell apart has left key Republicans frazzled.
The key issues are "as close to insoluble as they can get," a House Appropriations Committee aide today said. The aide particularly cited the national education testing language in the Labor-HHS spending bill, over which Republicans are feuding among themselves. "It is Nov. 3," the appropriations aide said. "Any compromise has to include everybody. It's one thing to sit in a room and make a deal with ourselves."
Appropriators last week cut a deal with Democrats on the testing issue, but House Republican leaders rejected the proposal - causing particularly hard feelings between the leadership and House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La.
Confusion over the status of the Labor-HHS bill continued today. "As far as we're concerned, the conference is closed," another House Appropriations Committee aide said. "It would be up to leadership to work anything out on testing."
A House GOP leadership aide said Education and the Workforce Chairman Goodling and Early Childhood, Youth and Families Subcommittee Chairman Frank Riggs, R-Calif., are working on testing language. "We'll reopen the conference when we have language," the leadership aide said.
When told Livingston said the bill cannot pass with new testing language and that Goodling said it cannot be passed without new language, the House Republican leadership aide said, "We'll see. It's hard to make those statements when there's no language out there. Like everybody else, they should hold their fire until there is language."
The leadership aide cited the 295 House members who voted for a testing prohibition, while the Appropriations aide pointed out that all but two House Republican members of the Labor-HHS conference committee had signed the conference report containing the testing deal that GOP leaders rejected.
Meanwhile, while a solution to the controversial census sampling issue may be being worked out, the House Republican leadership aide said no agreement has been reached. The aide said one option--which would allow the Census Bureau to test sample--was "overplayed." Republicans also are still attempting to work out international family planning language for the Foreign Operations bill and school vouchers provisions in the District of Columbia bill. But Republicans have made no decisions about another CR.
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