Congressional leaders gave up on a Wednesday adjournment last night with congressional leaders laying plans, and passing a continuing resolution, to finish work next week.
Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said Tuesday the House was likely to recess today in order to observe Veterans Day Thursday and come back into session Monday, when votes could occur. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., sketched out a similar timetable, saying, "Hopefully, we can finish Monday or Tuesday, by Tuesday night at the latest."
Armey nevertheless held out hope late Tuesday that Congress might adjourn today. "It's got that eerie feeling about it," he said. "You know how these things work. You have all these pieces strewn about, then suddenly it's [unanimous consent], and then we're done for the year."
The House passed a continuing resolution to fund portions of the government through Nov. 17, which the Senate is expected to take up today.
House and Senate appropriations negotiators will lay out several proposals in a meeting this morning with Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew, in hopes of getting agreements that will allow staff to start writing the final bills, House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said Tuesday night.
Young declined to elaborate on the details of those plans, but said they would include the politically sensitive issues of payment of U.N. arrears and restrictions on international family planning groups that get U.S. funds, the president's $1.4 billion initiative to reduce class sizes by hiring 100,000 new teachers, and language the administration wants to allow the International Monetary Fund to revalue its gold reserves to grant additional debt relief.
Congressional appropriators planned to hold a second round of Labor-HHS talks with the White House Tuesday afternoon, but Lew and other Democrats left the Capitol after being kept waiting while Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Chairman Arlen Specter, R- Pa., held a news conference criticizing the White House's class size plan.
Specter, in turn, was outraged that the administration deemed the issue non-negotiable, and by early evening Tuesday declared that Congress was equally wedded to its insistence that local school districts get the final say on how the money is spent.
Congressional leaders later conceded they could not meet their target adjournment deadline of tonight. "Logistically, it's a real problem," Lott told reporters after a 6 p.m. bicameral Republican leadership meeting.
But leaders and aides did say the two sides had narrowed their differences, and hoped that negotiators could resolve the final issues without having to keep members here.
Meanwhile, the White House and GOP congressional negotiators Tuesday continued to narrow their differences on the FY2000 Interior appropriations bill, though a final agreement remained elusive.
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