For a second year, appropriations work will wait until January

The first session of the 108th Congress came to a close Tuesday with seven of 13 annual must-pass appropriations bills unfinished, despite Republican control of both chambers and the White House.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., filed a cloture motion Tuesday on an $820 billion fiscal 2004 omnibus package wrapping together seven remaining spending bills, with a vote at 2:30 p.m. when the Senate returns Jan. 20. Frist said final passage could occur within 24 hours after that.

Frist failed to gain unanimous consent to approve the bill after objections were heard from Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Senate Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. The House approved the omnibus Monday, 242-176, before adjourning until Jan. 20, when a joint session will convene for President Bush's State of the Union speech.

Frist decided not to call senators back to town from their vacations -- despite direct lobbying by Bush -- due to a commitment not to have roll call votes until January. But Frist acknowledged he faced possible defeat on the Senate floor, putting agency spending in limbo for the remainder of the fiscal year.

"My job is to maximize opportunity to pass this omnibus bill," he told reporters. "This month there is sufficient uncertainty" about the bill that the chances for passage were "less than optimal," he said.

Daschle and Byrd criticized GOP leaders for not completing appropriations work on time. "At the beginning of the year we were told that the White House and Senate Republican leadership would make sure the appropriations process ran more smoothly than ever before," Daschle said. "In fact, the process broke down to an extent never seen before, opening the door to the worst kind of legislative abuses and special interest giveaways."

Before objecting to consideration of the omnibus, Daschle made a motion of his own -- to debate and vote on a resolution removing last-minute deals struck by the majority Republicans and the White House on provisions dealing with media ownership, overtime compensation, country-of-origin labeling for meat and produce, firearms sale documents and others.

Frist objected to that and another Daschle motion to break out from the omnibus the Foreign Operations spending bill and consider it separately, with Daschle citing concerns about lack of funding to combat HIV/AIDS. Frist replied there were sufficient funds within the current continuing resolution, which funds the government under fiscal 2003 levels through Jan. 31. Frist also objected to a motion to bring up a temporary unemployment benefits bill.

Frist defended his record as majority leader in moving the appropriations process along. Combined with the 11-bill fiscal 2003 omnibus approved early this year are the six 2004 spending bills already approved individually and the pending seven-bill 2004 omnibus measure.

"I passed 25 appropriations bills," Frist said in a slight exaggeration -- only 23 have been approved in the Senate under his watch. But Frist noted that when the Democrats were in control last year they were unable to move most of the 2003 spending bills across the floor.