House leaders were near a deal Wednesday night on how to proceed with appropriations bills, following two days of gridlock caused by Republicans angry over how Democrats planned to handle earmarks.

The tentative compromise apparently would bring most of the spending measures to the floor with earmarks.

Republicans brought consideration of the fiscal 2008 Homeland Security spending bill (HR 2638 — H Rept 110-181) to a virtual standstill over the decision by House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., to not include earmarks until conference. Obey said Wednesday he thought an agreement was near.

“If it is in fact worked out in detail it will be a reasonable schedule that recognizes we’re governed by what’s possible,” he said.

Republican aides cautioned the deal was not done. “The Democrats have made significant concessions, but there is no deal,” said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.

Although Democrats hoped to pass the first four appropriations bills this week, a Democratic aide said that they would scale that back to two: Homeland Security and Military Construction-VA (HR 2642 — H Rept 110-186). Neither would include earmarks before floor consideration, according to one House Republican.

Meanwhile, the Senate will begin full committee markups of its spending bills Thursday, with panel members in agreement over how to proceed on earmarks. Bill reports will identify earmarks and their sponsors.

Members of both parties have made frequent use of earmarks to help fund projects important to their districts. Their use grew rapidly during GOP control of Congress. Democrats vowed last year to bring greater transparency to the process, after several scandals erupted.

But Republicans saw a chance to argue that Democrats were reneging on their promises after Obey announced he would not include earmarks until conference.

Obey made the case that appropriations members and staff had not had enough time to vet the more than 32,000 requests properly. In addition to acting on the bills first, the House has more members than the Senate and more earmark requests.

Democratic leadership aides said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had deferred to Obey on the issue.

Republicans, meanwhile, saw a failure in Democratic leadership.

“The Appropriations chairman has walked away from the commitment the Speaker has made, and the Speaker hasn’t had the gumption to walk him back,” said Republican Conference Chairman Adam H. Putnam of Florida.

The Homeland Security measure is typically one of the most bipartisan of the spending bills. Overall, it would provide $37.4 billion to the Homeland Security Department in fiscal 2008.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said Democrats still want to move appropriations measures under open rules, which do not limit amendments. There had been some talk of adopting closed rules to limit amendments and get around the GOP stalling tactics, but that would have caused another rebellion by Republicans.

As it was, the House debated only four of the more than 100 amendments Republicans planned for the Homeland Security bill Wednesday, postponing votes until Thursday.

The strategy was led by the conservative Republican Study Committee. RSC leaders are scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday with Republican leadership to announce that they have the 145 signatures necessary to sustain threatened vetoes by President Bush on appropriations bills that exceed his request.

Clearly frustrated by the delays, Obey announced on the floor Wednesday that he was considering an amendment to each appropriations bill that would call for the end of earmarking. “I want to see how many of you actually vote for it,” Obey said.

One lawmaker likely to support such an amendment is Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a persistent earmark critic. Flake sent out a release Wednesday touting Democratic concessions that would add earmarks to all but the Homeland Security and Military Construction-VA bills prior to floor consideration. According to Flake, the proposal also would allow for a point of order on earmarks added to those two bills during conference.

The Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up its first two fiscal 2008 bills of the year Thursday: a $34.6 billion Homeland Security bill, and a $64.7 billion Military Construction-VA measure. Both bills would provide billions more in discretionary spending than requested.

The White House has already threatened to veto the House’s Homeland Security bill because it exceeds the request. The White House put out a policy statement Wednesday night that did not recommend vetoing the House Military Construction-VA bill, but said that if the cost of the increased funding was not offset by spending cuts elsewhere, other spending bills would be vetoed.

The White House also threatened to veto the House’s fiscal 2008 Energy-Water bill (HR 2641 — H Rept 110-185), which exceeds Bush’s request by $1.1 billion.

The Senate panel also will approve the amounts each of the 12 subcommittees will have to spend on their bills — the so-called 302(b) allocations. Appropriators have $23 billion more to spend than the $933 billion the president requested. That means several of the Senate bills also will face veto threats. The Senate panel is expected to provide about $2 billion less for its Labor-HHS-Education bill than the $151.1 billion the House committee provided for its bill.

On earmarks, Senate panel members are in agreement that bills will move through the committee with the provisions. The sponsors and purpose of earmarks will be listed in the reports accompanying the bills. The panel also has posted on its Web site letters from senators certifying that neither they nor their spouses will benefit financially from earmarks they requested. The letters were sought by Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and the panel’s ranking Republican, Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

“As a committee and as a Senate, we are committed to ensuring the public’s confidence in how these bills are written,” Byrd said in a statement. “We are moving forward with our bipartisan effort to ensure accountability and transparency in the appropriations process.”

But earmark trouble lurks on the floor in the Senate, too. Conservatives, led by Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., are unhappy that the Senate has not adopted earmark rules in an ethics bill (S 1) passed earlier this year. That bill is in limbo.

Coburn and DeMint argue that even though the committee has promised to enforce the spirit of that rule, earmark opponents will have no ability to challenge bills on the floor if they do not comply with the committee rule. The senators intend to make earmarks an issue when the bills come to the floor and could drag out consideration, making it even more difficult for the Senate to find the time to pass all 12 of its bills before the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year.

Josh Rogin, Jonathan Allen and Susan Ferrechio contributed to this story.