Congress faces crucial week on spending bills

Congressional leaders and appropriators hope to turn a corner this week in what has been a tortured and dysfunctional appropriations season.

The House and Senate will have to pass some type of continuing resolution this week to keep the government running past next Monday, which is the end of the current fiscal year. All signs point to a clean CR using fiscal 2002 funding levels; the only question is whether the CR would extend to Oct. 4 or Oct. 11.

The bigger question congressional leaders will have to face in coming weeks is whether to pursue a long-term CR strategy to avoid a lengthy lame-duck session and push off major spending decisions until halfway through fiscal 2003-or whether Congress should return after the elections to complete their work on appropriations.

House appropriators are pushing the idea of dealing with the matter during a lame duck session-but they are meeting resistance from many Republican leaders in both the House and Senate.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has said he would prefer to get the work done, though he has not completely ruled out the possibility of a long-term CR. Those discussions will likely continue this week, as appropriators in both chambers continue to try to advance their 2003 spending bills.

In the House, appropriators are looking to mark up the VA-HUD and Transportation appropriations measures if they can work out disagreements in time.

If the Appropriations panel were to complete them, they would not move to the floor this week. Instead, they would be put in the appropriations queue along with three other bills-the Foreign Operations, Energy and Water and Agriculture spending bills-that have passed the full committee but have not yet seen floor action.

Meetings on the Labor-HHS spending bill could also continue this week, although lawmakers give those efforts little chance of finding a solution to break the logjam over spending levels in the bill.

In the Senate, a cloture vote is expected Monday on the Interior appropriations measure, which, if passed, should put the legislation on track to completion by the end of the week. If that were to be finished, the Senate could take up the Treasury-Postal spending bill.

On the budget side of the equation, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and ranking member Pete Domenici, R-N.M., are expected to take to the Senate floor a resolution that would extend budget enforcement and so-called pay/go rules.

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, may try to filibuster-but Conrad and Domenici likely have the 60 votes necessary to kill the filibuster and pass the resolution.

Daschle announced last week that the Senate is expected to be in session all week-and perhaps through the weekend. In an effort to prod the Senate to complete a number of pressing bills by the target adjournment date next month, Daschle told senators to cancel their weekend plans and to be prepared to be in session Saturdays and Sundays.

Daschle said that being in session this weekend "is a very likely possibility." He said he is "increasingly concerned" that the time-consuming debate on legislation to create a Homeland Security Department and the Interior spending bill have made it difficult to finish a number of must-pass bills by the target adjournment date of Oct. 11.

As a result, "we expect to be using weekend days between now and adjournment," Daschle said.