The president’s nominee to head the White House budget office will face a tough test Thursday when he meets with the Senate Budget Committee for the second round of his confirmation hearings.

Former Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa (1991-2007), will try to assure senators he can work with Congress to avert a major conflict this fall over spending priorities.

President Bush vows to veto fiscal 2008 appropriations bills cleared by the Democratic-controlled Congress if they exceed his requests for those bills. Democrats are planning to spend $23 billion more than the $933 billion Bush requested for the 12 annual spending measures.

Democratic leaders have shown no willingness to budge from the funding levels in the fiscal 2008 budget resolution (S Con Res 21).

Nussle, who has been nominated to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday that he is eager to work with Congress to resolve the spending differences. But he did not signal what compromises the administration might be willing to make.

“We’re going to have to work through this,” Nussle told the senators during the panel’s hearing on his nomination. He said it is important to start a dialogue soon.

Democrats on the Senate Budget panel will likely press harder on the issue Thursday. The two panels share jurisdiction over the nomination.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said he is not expecting Nussle to have specific answers but that “clearly he has a responsibility to give us an outline of how do we finish the business of the country this year.”

The Homeland Security panel has not scheduled a vote on Nussle’s confirmation. Conrad said a vote by his panel depends on what happens Thursday.

If the full Senate does not confirm Nussle before the Senate begins its August break at the end of next week, Bush could install Nussle through a recess appointment. But that would likely further inflame budget tensions this fall.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., asked Nussle about the veto threats, saying he was “troubled by some of the budgetary rhetoric emanating at this moment from the White House.”

Recently Bush has been emphasizing his intent to veto spending bills. So far, the administration has threatened to veto six House spending bills for reasons including their cost. Against that backdrop, Lieberman said, the next OMB director will need to be “a bridge-builder, a credible intermediary.”

Conrad has said senators who served in the House with Nussle question whether he fits that description.

Nussle was House Budget Committee chairman during the last six years of his tenure and was not afraid to mix it up rhetorically with Democrats.

Nussle used the hearing to push back against suggestions that he would be too partisan. He received a boost from his home-state Democratic senator, Tom Harkin. “You know where he’s coming from, and he’s always aboveboard,” Harkin said, adding that Nussle was “superbly qualified.”

Rob Portman, the current OMB director, responded Tuesday to a July 20 letter from Democratic congressional leaders requesting a meeting with Bush on budget issues. Portman said he and the president look forward to discussing the issue with leaders of both parties but gave no ground on the veto threats and chided Democrats for failure to complete any of the 2008 spending bills.