Appropriations committee leaders vow quick action on bills, supplemental

The House and Senate Appropriations committees have outlined ambitious schedules to complete work this year -- including all fiscal 2007 spending bills individually -- recognizing they have little time to act with the November elections looming.

House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., has informed GOP leaders of his intention to complete work on an fiscal 2006 supplemental for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and hurricane relief the week of March 6, with the goal of moving to the floor the following week to wrap up work in that chamber by the recess beginning March 20.

After meeting with his committee members last week, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., called the supplemental the first order of business in that chamber as well, with a full committee hearing to be held on the $88 billion request -- about $70 billion for the wars and $18 billion for Katrina assistance -- shortly after the White House submits the proposals in the next two weeks.

"We'll have a full committee hearing on that request, then we hope the House is going to take action on the supplemental by the March recess," Cochran said. "We hope to complete our action by late April, maybe by the first of May would be a good target date for us to complete our action on that."

Such a pace would give House-Senate conferees the remainder of May to negotiate, setting up final passage of a supplemental conference report by the Memorial Day recess, if not sooner.

While wrapping up all 12 individual fiscal 2007 spending bills before the elections is a tall order -- both chambers have made plans to leave by Oct. 6 for the campaign's final stretch -- Lewis and Cochran share an overriding goal of avoiding a massive year-end omnibus bill.

"The House is going to, we think, push to get all their bills done by the July recess," Cochran said. "And we would try to respond and get the bills reported in a timely fashion from the Senate so we will not be looking at an end of the year omnibus bill. We'd like to do individual bills as we did last year. We proved it could be done; we hope to replicate that this year."

Last year, the House pushed through all of its appropriations bills by June 30, the earliest in 18 years. The House Appropriations Committee is planning to begin marking up, after a two-month hearing process, its fiscal 2007 spending bills the week of May 1, beginning with the Agriculture and Interior bills -- which would be cut by President Bush's request by 7 percent and 3 percent, respectively -- as well as the Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs measure, slated for a 14 percent increase.

The House and Senate Budget committees, meanwhile, are preparing to mark up their respective fiscal 2007 budget resolutions the first full week of March, eyeing the statutory April 15 deadline for final passage of a conference report.

The Budget panels first must get CBO's re-scoring of Bush's budget, which could alter the president's $870.7 billion cap on fiscal 2007 discretionary spending. Last year's completion fell at the end of April, while the previous year -- in the run-up to the 2004 elections -- Congress did not pass a budget resolution.

There is no word on how long the appropriators are willing to wait if budget talks drag on into May.