The House today was expected to adopt a joint leadership unanimous consent agreement that would clear the way to resume work on fiscal 2008 spending bills.

The agreement addresses “airdropped” earmarks emerging from conference, a key concern of Republicans. Similar to the House Republicans’ earmark rule adopted late last year, it would allow individual members to lodge a point of order against conference reports that contain earmarks not originally included in the House or Senate measures. The chamber would then vote on whether the measure should be returned to conference. Unlike the GOP rule, however, it would apply only to spending bills and not to tax or authorization measures.

The parties reached the agreement Thursday after being tied up for three days by Republican floor protests over the treatment of earmarks. Under the agreement, the Energy-Water spending bill (HR 2641) — set for floor consideration tomorrow — will be the last bill considered without its earmarks.

Many Democrats, however, are unhappy about the way their leaders handled the earmark issue. The stalemate forced Democrats to scale back their ambitious goal of passing 11 of the 12 fiscal 2008 spending bills by the July Fourth recess, and they now are hoping to finish eight.