If Congress expects to adjourn early next month, this could be a crucial week for appropriators struggling to solve significant problems with many of the remaining fiscal 1999 spending measures. "Right now, we're on track," House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., said Friday. "We can do it."
Livingston said he believes Congress can finish the annual funding bills by the Oct. 9 expiration date of the continuing resolution signed Friday by President Clinton.
"If everybody knuckles down and just doesn't pontificate before fundraisers, we'll be in fine shape," he said. Livingston said he still expects a "few vetoes and a few items of true differences."
He again raised the possibility that Clinton might cause an appropriations crisis in an effort to deflect attention away from his own problems. "I can't predict where the president wants to take this country in the next two weeks on extraneous matter," he said.
Democrats clearly believe the decisions are out of their hands. "The Republicans are in the majority," House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., said last week.
Obey added he is skeptical that Congress will adjourn by the target date of Oct. 9. "I told my staff not to schedule anything until the 17th and that's too early," a pessimistic Obey added. "I have no idea when we're going to get out of here, but it won't be the 9th."
Giving themselves more time, the House and Senate have passed and Clinton has signed a CR that essentially extends the fiscal year through Oct. 9.
However, both houses still face a huge job. They have cleared only two of the 13 annual appropriations bills. And those two, the Military Construction and Legislative Branch measures, are historically among the smallest and least controversial.
Clinton has signed the Military Construction bill, and the Senate Friday joined the House in approving the Legislative Branch measure.
Appropriators hope to make progress on several bills this week. The House later today is likely to consider the Defense and Energy and Water conference reports.
The Agriculture appropriations conference will meet later today; conferees have been attempting to deal with the size of any supplemental spending package they want to pass as disaster assistance to farmers.
The Treasury-Postal appropriations conference, which has been struggling with the question of funding for contraceptives in federal employee health plans, is also scheduled to meet today.
The VA-HUD appropriations conference may meet Thursday. Conferees on that bill will continue to haggle over a massive housing reauthorization bill that the House added to the funding measure.
The remaining appropriations bills are likely to be folded into an omnibus funding measure.
The Senate is not expected to consider its Labor-HHS funding bill separately, and the House continues to struggle to find an acceptable rule under which to bring its bill to the floor.
Republicans, Democrats and the Clinton administration will have to settle the issue of whether to allow sampling in the 2000 census before differences over the Commerce-Justice-State measure can be resolved.
The Senate is unlikely to consider the Interior funding measure separately and appropriators will confront problems with Senate environmental riders in the bill before it can be folded into the omnibus bill.
Foreign Operations appropriators, congressional leadership and the administration will have to settle the questions of funding for the International Monetary Fund and family planning language before differences over that bill can be solved.
Aside from the remaining annual funding measures, Congress will also consider a supplemental spending package providing funding for the year 2000 computer problem, embassy safety and defense spending.
The exact form that bill will take and whether the supplemental spending will be paid for with offsets also must be settled.
A coalition of House Republican moderates and conservatives last week circulated a list of $27 billion in possible offsets to pay for the supplemental.
The list includes $19 billion in entitlement cuts and $8 billion in discretionary savings.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, last week promised to "strive to offset the supplemental as much as possible."
But Livingston has questioned the feasibility of passing these spending cuts. And House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., acknowledged, "It's very hard to do it."
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