Appropriators, OMB seek to set final spending targets
Top congressional appropriators' staffers and Office of Management and Budget officials planned to meet Monday afternoon with an eye to jump-starting the fiscal 2002 appropriations process, which was derailed last week as Congress scrambled to enact a $40 billion emergency supplemental to respond to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Sources said they hope to set final numbers, in particular, for the six FY02 spending bills that have passed both chambers--Commerce-Justice-State, Energy and Water, Interior, Legislative Branch, Transportation and VA-HUD--so conferees can be appointed and conference committees convened by week's end.
The larger goal, however, is to start developing a bipartisan endgame strategy to wrap up work on the FY02 bills as early as the end of October, so Congress and the White House can focus on the battle against terrorism.
To that end, negotiators must also find ways to pay for the additional $3.3 billion for elementary and secondary education they had tentatively agreed to add to the Labor-HHS bill, and to ensure the total price tag on the FY02 bills sticks to the outlay limit of roughly $691 billion now envisioned.
To date, the House has passed nine FY02 spending bills while the Senate has cleared six, with the seventh--Treasury-Postal--queued up for Senate floor action Wednesday. The other two measures that have passed the House but are still awaiting Senate floor action are the Foreign Operations and Agriculture spending bills.
Although the White House and House GOP leaders in particular are eager to speed the FY02 spending bills through to completion, a Democratic source cautioned today that even with the greater pressure on lawmakers to strive for bipartisanship, "there is a huge amount of work to be done around here [on the appropriations agenda], even if we stop fighting with each other."
Among other things, the source pointed out that Congress will want a role in determining how the first $20 billion of the supplemental--which was made available to the administration immediately--will be spent, as well as in arriving at any new priorities arising out of last week's attacks that have to be addressed within the existing FY02 bills.