Earmarks and embryonic stem cell research are expected to be at the center of debate this week when the Senate takes up the largest annual domestic spending bill.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that the Senate will begin debating the fiscal 2008 appropriations bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS) and Education (HR 3043, S 1710) on Tuesday.

Reid hopes to finish the bill this week, in order to clear the schedule for debate on a massive and contentious farm bill (HR 2419), even if the Senate has to work into the weekend.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sounded accommodating. “We need to try to complete it as rapidly as possible,” he said about the Labor-HHS-Education measure. Some members of his party may not be as cooperative, however.

The bill would provide $606 billion for the agencies under its jurisdiction, including $149.9 billion in discretionary spending. The discretionary figure is $5.4 billion more than in fiscal 2007 and $9.6 billion more than President Bush requested. It is $1.9 billion less than in the House-passed bill.

Bush has threatened to veto both versions, as part of a promise to reject any spending bill that exceeds his proposed budget.

Republicans are expected to attack the more than 1,000 earmarks in the bill.

“We’re in a war on terror and we’re trying to be fiscally responsible,” a Senate GOP aide said. “Museums and aquariums are not a national priority.”

The bill includes $150,000 in earmarks for the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, Va., and millions of dollars for individual museums and parks around the country.

Conservatives also are expected to try to strip a provision that would allow expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research. Under an order Bush issued Aug. 9, 2001, federal funding for the research is restricted to stem cell lines created before that date. Bush opposes such research on moral grounds because it requires the destruction of human embryos.

Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is a strong advocate of embryonic stem cell research and wrote the Labor-HHS-Education bill, says Bush’s policy made only six viable cell lines eligible for federal research funding. Harkin, who calls the order’s cutoff date arbitrary, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the senior Republican on the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, wrote bill language that would open funding to any cell lines created before June 15, 2007.

Although conservatives may slow the bill’s passage, they are unlikely to stop it. The Appropriations Committee approved the bill June 21 on a 26-3 vote, and a similar bipartisan majority is expected to support it on the floor.

The House passed its version, 276-140, on July 19 — just two votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto.