Falling surplus, fiscal year end pose budgeting dilemma

Congress will return from recess next month to face a bracing one-two punch on the budget front, as members grapple with a budgetary squeeze brought on by plummeting surplus estimates while the clock ticks down the final days of the fiscal year.

Already, sources in both House and Senate Appropriations committees have conceded September would bring action on a continuing resolution, which a House source estimated would cover two weeks.

Because of the change in administrations, the budget cycle started late this year. As a result, not a single fiscal 2002 appropriations bill has gone to conference or been signed into law. The House has cleared nine of the 13 annual bills, while the Senate has acted on five, with four more ready for the floor.

Of the nine bills that are in the legislative pipeline--Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-State, Energy and Water, Foreign Operations, Interior, Legislative Branch, Transportation, Treasury-Postal and VA-HUD--only the Transportation bill, with its controversial language on Mexican trucks, faces a veto threat.

But at least a handful of potentially messy policy fights are possible on the bills now before Congress, while even more pitched battles for extra money loom on the Labor-HHS and Defense bills, which have yet to be written.

Also outstanding, but not expected to face significant obstacles to passage, are the District of Columbia and Military Construction measures.

Congress could find itself stalled on the Foreign Operations bill, if the Senate retains language inserted in committee to block implementation of the so-called Mexico City policy restricting international family planning groups, and on the Treasury-Postal bill, if Senate Treasury-Postal Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., attaches a provisions to the bill--mirroring House-passed language--to block implementation of the ban on travel to Cuba. And the VA-HUD conference must deal with the $1.3 billion in emergency Federal Emergency Management Agency funding that House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, added to the House bill.

A House Appropriations source said the panel will appoint conferees on the first day back on the five bills that have passed both chambers--Energy and Water, Interior, Legislative Branch, Transportation and VA-HUD--and hopes to get the Defense, Military Construction and the District of Columbia bills marked up and through the House in September, along with a continuing resolution of roughly two weeks.

On the Senate side, the committee will push to get all 13 bills to Senate passage by the end of the month.

But in addition to the scheduling constraints both chambers face with approximately 13 legislative days in the month, the Senate's tentative schedule also has to make room for debate on the Export Administration Act the first week of September and the defense authorization bill the third week.

Sources with both committees say they hope to get nine bills conferenced and to the President's desk before the Oct. 1 start of fiscal 2002--but concede that may be an overly optimistic timetable.