On spending bills, 'bad, badder, baddest' year

With only a week to go before the House recesses and two weeks before the Senate closes shop for the summer break, appropriators are finding themselves in the usual position of falling behind schedule-or at least behind where they would like to be at this point in the year.

But now, a combination of flukes and factors is leading many top appropriators to call this year the worst ever for appropriations-with a grinding train wreck just ahead that no one knows how to avoid.

In the words of one senior House aide, this is the "bad, badder, baddest year" on record-and the evidence is pretty overwhelming.

While they do not always accomplish the goal, House appropriators like to finish marking up nearly all 13 annual spending bills by the August recess-and to have a few of them in conference with the Senate.

But the inability of House and Senate leaders to pass a bicameral budget resolution, combined with a four-month debate over the fiscal 2002 supplemental, has delayed appropriators to the point that the full House Appropriations Committee has marked up only six bills. Four of those-Defense, Military Construction, Interior and Legislative Branch-have cleared the floor, with Treasury-Postal expected to pass this week.

"I can't remember a time when we haven't had seven or eight bills pass the floor by the August recess," said Treasury-Postal Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

That might have been possible until last week, when House leaders decided to interrupt the appropriations process to assuage conservatives who complained that many of the first bills were front-loaded with cash that left many big, difficult bills shortchanged.

Now, instead of starting September with the Agriculture and Energy and Water bills in the can, appropriators are being forced to reverse direction and focus their attention on marking up the Labor-HHS bill, which many lawmakers concede is too short on funds to pass the House.

In the Senate, the situation is either better or worse, depending on how one looks at it.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., has moved eight bills through the full committee so far and intends to pass the other five this week. But only the Military Construction measure-the easiest bill to pass-has so far cleared the floor.

Byrd wants to move forward with as many bills as possible, but finding floor time in the midst of corporate accountability and prescription drug legislation has been tough. And Western Republicans also objected to moving any bills until this week, thanks to a dispute over money for firefighting efforts.

While that dispute has subsided, Republicans are still threatening to hold up appropriations bills until Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., moves the Defense spending bill-a priority of the Bush administration-to the floor.

A Daschle spokeswoman indicated late last week that there is still no set schedule, although Daschle would like to proceed on a dual-track basis to expedite appropriations bills as much as possible.

Moving ahead on appropriations is not going to be easy. The lack of a bicameral budget resolution has allowed partisanship to dictate that both chambers move forward with widely different spending totals.

The House has almost $10 billion less to spend than the Senate-a recipe for displays of party leaders sniping this fall over plans for spending too little or too much.

"While people might be carping, it might not be as bad as it is now, because we don't know where we're going," acknowledged Senate GOP Policy Committee Chairman Larry Craig of Idaho, also an appropriator.

Craig said it was an "outright failure of the Daschle leadership" that a budget could not be agreed upon. But Democrats are looking to criticize the House and the administration for a "top-line" mentality that refuses to acknowledge congressional calls to increase spending for education, anti-terror activities and the like.

"It's been almost government by non-action, non-decision, false decision and delay," said House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis.

Those arguments are likely to continue in September, which many see as a disaster waiting to happen.

Just as conservatives in the House are set to play spoiler to appropriators' plans, Senate GOP leaders have said they will hold up spending bills that exceed the president's request by large amounts.

Even if bills get through floor action in both chambers, conferences on many of the more contentious bills may be virtually impossible.

Appropriators complain that House and Senate leaders have given no thought to how to reconcile the House and Senate numbers. On the Labor-HHS bill alone, the two sides are more than $4 billion apart.

On top of that, the administration has floated a new Defense request for $10 billion that both House and Senate appropriators claim is "vague" and unworkable.

And while a continuing resolution is inevitable, no consensus exists on when to "pull the plug" and pass one, how long it should last, or what bills it must cover.

"All of this might make taxpayers wonder why they're paying taxes," quipped a House Appropriations Committee aide. "It doesn't help to look back, but looking ahead isn't pretty."