Just before the start of the new fiscal year, President Clinton late Tuesday signed a continuing resolution that keeps the government operating through Oct. 23 while Congress continues work on the annual appropriations bills.
The Senate passed the Treasury-Postal appropriations measure on Tuesday, meaning that five of the 13 annual appropriations bills have been cleared by both houses. The others are the Defense, Energy and Water, Legislative Branch and Military Construction measures.
House appropriators are trying to avoid a large omnibus spending bill and would like to finish all 13 bills by the time the current CR expires Oct. 23.
"I think we can get it done by the 23rd," said House Approporiations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La. "I don't know if we will."
To finish by then, appropriators are trying to work with the administration, Livingston said. "To the extent we can accommodate them, we will," he said.
Livingston said he fully expects a confrontation on the census sampling issue on Commerce- Justice-State and on national testing language on Labor-HHS. He said he has "every expectation" that the Labor-HHS conference will prohibit national testing. He said, however, he does not expect conferees to embrace the Senate plan to convert many elementary and secondary education programs into a block grant.
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