Senate leader faces several hurdles to fast passage of omnibus

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., left town Tuesday night optimistic about returning Jan. 20 and invoking cloture on the $820 billion fiscal 2004 omnibus spending bill in time to listen to President Bush outline his legislative priorities in the annual State of the Union speech that night.

But lawmakers and aides say the vote is not assured, as Senate Democrats are still fuming over last-minute policy riders negotiated among the majority Republicans and the White House. Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D.N.D., said Thursday he would urge colleagues to vote against cloture on the basis of last-minute changes such as removal of a provision blocking Labor Department overtime compensation rules and raising the broadcast ownership cap from 35 to 39 percent.

"My hope is we don't advance [the omnibus] until we resolve these issues," Dorgan said. "We can pass an omnibus in my judgment if it contains provisions voted on by the House and Senate."

Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who blocked a unanimous consent request to approve the massive bill, has already said he would vote "no" and urge Democrats to follow suit. Senate Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., angrily denounced the omnibus but has not said which way he is leaning.

Frist said that once senators had time to sift through the bill, they would be more likely to support it.

"Right now, people would just look at the most contentious elements of the bill, not look at the whole thing," he said.

But aides on both sides of the aisle said if it appeared cloture would not be invoked, appropriators as a fallback could reopen the conference and make changes using another vehicle, such as the VA-HUD or Transportation-Treasury spending bills, which technically are still in conference. But aides said House GOP leaders would be adamantly opposed to that approach, leaving Frist in the position of backing Democratic holdouts against the Jan. 31 deadline for approval of the budget, when the current continuing resolution expires.

Dorgan was especially angry about the media ownership issue, which conferees had compromised on capping any single firm's nationwide broadcast reach at 35 percent. After coming under White House pressure in the final negotiations, Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, relented and agreed to a 39 percent cap. At the time, Stevens predicted defeat for the omnibus in January due to the changes to media caps and other issues such as a House-backed provision allowing the government to destroy gun background check documents within 24 hours of a sale.

But the next day, Stevens changed his tune, arguing that the necessary funding increases in the bill for veterans' health care, counterterrorism, global HIV/AIDS and other purposes would propel its passage. Alaska earmarks of $342 million are also in the bill -- covering projects ranging from $50,000 for the Imaginarium Science Center in Anchorage to $25 million for the Alaska Railroad. Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group, predicted senators would tire of the budget battle in January and allow the omnibus to pass.

"At some point an attitude takes hold that says, 'Let's just move on,'" he said.