Appropriators seek to avoid long-term temporary funding measure

The Senate remains far behind the House on appropriations, with only two spending bills finished and a third -- the $10 billion fiscal 2005 Military Construction bill -- expected to wrap up Tuesday. Lawmakers and aides regard passage of supplemental funds for hurricane recovery as a must, however, and discussions were taking place Wednesday over whether to move a $3.1 billion disaster aid package in conference on the 2005 Homeland Security bill or separately.

"The pressure's not on today like it was last week," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said, referring to swift passage of last week's $2 billion emergency bill to avoid a Federal Emergency Management Agency shutdown.

Young has introduced a stand-alone bill mirroring President Bush's request, onto which additional funds for Hurricane Ivan will be attached. The White House and GOP leaders want to keep the supplemental clean of add-ons.

Young and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, are discussing how to complete the fiscal 2005 process without resorting to a long-term continuing resolution, as some have advocated in the absence of finished appropriations work before adjournment. Next week, appropriators will have to negotiate what single-item "anomalies" will be included in the first CR, which is likely to be considered the week of Sept. 27.

The requests for special treatment in the CR are already coming in, including a plea from Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist for the federal judiciary to be exempt from the measure. Rehnquist said in a letter to House leaders that they should fund the judiciary at fiscal 2005 levels, as opposed to the previous year's levels, as would happen in a continuing resolution.

"This amounts to a hard freeze in appropriations that would be devastating to the judiciary," Rehnquist wrote Monday. A CR would result in "even larger staff reductions, possibly affecting thousands of valued employees" after low fiscal 2004 funding already forced hundreds of court staff and probation officers to be fired, Rehnquist wrote.

Appropriators are skeptical of granting exemptions for certain agencies, however. "Once you start making exceptions you get a whole host of other agencies looking for special consideration," a House Appropriations spokesman said.