Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd is expected to announce Thursday that his panel will mark up a second supplemental spending bill July 22.

The news comes as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said his chamber will likely consider, at most, two fiscal 2009 spending bills this year before passing a continuing resolution in September that would keep the government funded at current levels into early next calendar year. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

“I hope we would do a continuing resolution until after Sen. Obama becomes president,” he said referring the Democrat’s presumptive presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

Obama will face off in the election against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Like House leaders, Reid said he does not anticipate the Senate returning to work after the November elections for a “lame-duck” session. He said the Senate may consider the fiscal 2009 Defense and Military Construction-VA spending bills in September. With the appropriations process stalled in the House, those two measure may have to be included in a continuing resolution as well.

House leaders also are interested in moving a second economic stimulus or supplemental spending bill soon, possibly later this month. Reid has said such a bill would not come to the Senate floor until September.

With the appropriations process in flux, lawmakers are looking at a second supplemental spending or stimulus bill as a vehicle for immediate needs.

Senate appropriators still hope to have all 12 spending bills approved by the panel by the end of the month. The House committee has stopped considering bills as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether they should be used as a vehicle for amendments concerning energy policy at a time of rising gasoline prices.