House Democrats looking to expedite work on supplemental

With the Fourth of July recess fast approaching, House Democrats are seriously considering bypassing an Appropriations Committee markup of the urgently needed supplemental spending bill and sending the measure straight to the floor.

Among the legislative options still on the table is having the House take up the Senate-passed version of the spending bill and substituting its contents with a version crafted by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., several sources said Tuesday.

In this manner, the House and Senate could skip a formal conference to resolve differences between their two versions and instead send disputed sections of the bill back and forth informally between the two chambers to work out a compromise.

This scenario is one option being weighed, but no final decisions have been made, a House Democratic leadership aide emphasized.

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said he has heard "three or four different ways" the House could approach consideration of the supplemental.

But Dicks, the second highest-ranking Democrat on the full committee, said that sending the bill to the floor without a markup "looks like it's the most likely approach."

The bill, sources said, would likely not be on the floor until next week.

The Defense Department had said it needed the supplemental funding by Memorial Day to avoid a disruption in its war-related accounts. But the military can use fourth-quarter dollars to pay pressing expenses arising from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to buy time until the supplemental is enacted.

Faced with growing pressures to address the rising budget deficit, Democratic leaders still need to get support from lawmakers within their own party for spending Obey added to the bill to avert thousands of teacher layoffs at public schools across the country. The Senate's version of the bill does not include the funding because it lacked sufficient support for it.

Obey originally included $23 billion in his bill for aid to teachers, but Democratic leaders are considering scaling that back to $10 billion, the leadership aide said.

They also are exploring the possibility of using unspent funds from the 2009 economic stimulus package to offset the teacher funding and other jobs initiatives in the House supplemental.

One veteran Democratic appropriator said Tuesday that Obey has been negotiating with the panel's subcommittee chairmen on what unspent stimulus funding remains and how much they are willing to agree to repurpose to save teachers' jobs.

But before taking up the supplemental, House Democrats must make sure the White House and Senate are on board with using stimulus funds to cover the cost of local aid to avert teacher layoffs, the leadership aide said.

On Saturday, President Obama urged congressional leaders to approve the teacher funding, arguing that it is among several "emergency measures" needed for the nation's economic recovery.