Deep differences between Republicans and Democrats, and the House and Senate, over spending priorities threaten to derail the appropriations process and force Congress to return for a lame-duck session after the November elections.
The specter of a spending gridlock looms on Capitol Hill despite a broad bipartisan consensus on fighting the war against terrorism.
In the absence of a joint budget resolution between the House and Senate, a growing chorus of lawmakers in the House and Senate are increasingly resigned to the prospect of significant delays.
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PATRICK G. RYAN
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| Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) |
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“That means we’ll be here in November and December,” said Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the House chief deputy whip. “We’ve been here the last two Decembers and I think we will be again. This time it will be largely because the Senate has been so slow with [homeland security and defense] issues.”
House Republicans predict the lawmakers will stay in session as a lame-duck Congress until December despite the midterm elections and the need of vulnerable members to campaign.
With the failure of the House and Senate to pass a single regular appropriations bill six months into the session, Democrats and Republicans are taking turns blaming each other for the impasse.
House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young (R-Fla.) said he hopes to shepherd the defense and military construction spending bills through the House before the Congress adjourns at week’s end — a pace so slow that, as Blunt sees it, a lame-duck session is all but inevitable.
Republicans accuse Senate Democrats of intentionally slowing the progress of the spending bills to force President Bush to agree to an omnibus package and higher nondefense discretionary spending at the end of the year.
They also say that Democrats want to hold hostage the defense appropriations bill, a priority of the Bush administration, in order to gain more funding for such Democratic priorities as education.
“I think we’re headed for a possible train wreck here,” Nick Calio, who heads the White House congressional liaison team, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Friday.
“The appropriations process should be in a much higher gear than it is now,” he added. “The question is whether the delay … is a ploy for more spending.”
Calio, however, downplayed the possibility of a government shutdown.
The lack of a joint budget resolution means that House and Senate spending bills will have to be ironed out in conferences at drastically different levels, making it “impossible” to arrive at a compromise, according to Young.
“By the collapse of the budget process, we have been given a nearly impossible task to reconcile our bills with the Senate bills,” said Young. “We do not have the same top number [for total discretionary spending] and that makes our job reconciling differences between the two bodies virtually impossible.”
While the House passed a budget calling for such spending not to exceed $748 billion, the Senate has set a level of $769 billion for discretionary spending in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
The discrepancy could lead to a messy fall as spending bills stack up and the time to pass them shrinks.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has been negotiating with GOP leaders for weeks on setting a discretionary spending number, defended the Democrats’ continued inability to approve a budget and thereby kick start the appropriations process.
“We had a chance to put in place a budget for the year and budget procedures for the year and [Republicans] voted against it,” he said. “That would have helped immensely.”
“These guys are creating the train wreck,” he said, echoing Calio’s phrasing.
In an interview, Conrad said the process has been further complicated by controversial legislation, such as campaign finance reform, the farm bill and a comprehensive trade package.
“All these bills have taken a good deal more time than was anticipated,” he said. “There’s been a lot of legislation that has soaked up a lot of time.”
Conrad said if members of the Senate could agree on a budget or total discretionary spending number, they could move very quickly toward completing the 13 annual appropriations bills.
While in recent years the Senate has been slower than the House in passing spending bills, this year’s delay is especially bad and, because of the lack of a budget, it’s likely to get much worse.
“We would normally by July 4th have two or three appropriations bills completed in the Senate,” said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. “Not only will we not have them completed we have no allocation yet that allows the different subcommittees to function.”
Craig explained that Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has not yet given the subcommittee chairmen on his panel spending allocations for their bills. That means none of the 13 bills can even move to a subcommittee markup.
Craig also noted that without a budget, amendments tacking extra spending to appropriations bills on the floor of the Senate cannot be blocked by a point of order, a parliamentary objection that would require a “supermajority” of 60 votes for a successful override.
He said that would likely force Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to extend the session into December or freeze all nondefense spending at the current levels.
“There is no process to protect an orderly floor effort,” Craig argued. “Clearly, at this moment in time, when you compare what hasn’t been done with what needs to be done in a very difficult process I’m not sure I understand what Tom Daschle is thinking. Is he thinking lame-duck session? Is he thinking continuing resolution?”