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Oct. 31, 2011 – 10:49 p.m.

Senate Preparing Second ‘Minibus’

By Kerry Young and Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

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Senate Democrats are making plans to move a second “minibus” of three fiscal 2012 appropriations bills in the coming week as the chamber prepares to send the first such combination to the House on Tuesday.

Senate debate on the second minibus may be more contentious than the floor action on the initial package, particularly if Republican senators try to use the measure to roll back President Obama’s health care law.

Votes are scheduled beginning Tuesday morning on remaining amendments to the first minibus (HR 2112), which combines the Agriculture spending bill with the Commerce-Justice-Science (S 1572) and Transportation-HUD (S 1596) measures.

At least one amendment may generate partisan debate. Idaho Republican Michael D. Crapo is proposing to delay implementation of provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial services overhaul (PL 111-203) related to derivatives transactions.

For the most part, however, floor debate on the first spending package has produced little rancor. Passage of the bill by a bipartisan majority is expected soon after the votes on amendments.

The next spending package — which is expected to combine the Energy-Water bill (HR 2354) with the Financial Services (S 1573) and State-Foreign Operations (S 1601) measures — may also pass with a bipartisan majority. But that package is likely to attract many controversial amendments aimed at Obama administration initiatives favored by Democrats.

Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., confirmed the likelihood of the second minibus on Monday, although he cautioned that “no final decision has been made” about its shape.

At the same time, Durbin said the measure will probably be a “magnet for votes.” During the full Appropriations Committee markup of the Financial Services measure last month, Republicans challenged the Dodd-Frank law and administration policies toward Cuba, and also attempted to curtail parts of the 2010 health care overhaul (PL 111-148, PL 111-152).

Moving Minibuses

The Senate’s minibus strategy may serve both to expedite action on the 12 annual appropriations bills — none of which has become law a month into the current fiscal year — and to give the Senate an advantage in negotiations with the House on bills that chamber has not considered.

The goal of Senate leaders is to send the minibus measures to House-Senate conference committees where differences would be worked out. Conference agreements that would not be subject to amendment would go back to the two chambers for final votes.

In the case of the first minibus, the full House has acted only on the Agriculture portion, which means that most House members have not had a chance to amend or vote on large portions of the minibus assembled by the Senate. Even the full House Appropriations Committee never acted on the Transportation-HUD portion.

The same goes for the expected second minibus. The full House has acted only on the Energy-Water portion. And the House Appropriations panel has not considered the State-Foreign Operations portion.

Senate Preparing Second ‘Minibus’

Nonetheless, House and Senate aides expect conferees to get to work on a conference agreement for the first minibus soon after the Senate passes it. It remains unclear, though, whether the House will seek to add one or more additional regular appropriations bills to the package. That idea was raised last week by House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky.

Conference action on both minibus bills is expected to be quick.

Aides to the House and Senate Appropriations committees have been talking to try to smooth out differences between the chambers on most or all of the bills, a process Rogers called “clearing the underbrush.”

Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., chairman of the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said staff talks have begun on his bill, which is likely to be one of the most controversial and has not been considered by his subcommittee.

And House Energy-Water Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., said he has begun talks with his Senate counterpart, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in anticipation of Senate consideration of the second measure. Frelinghuysen said a compromise could be reached on that bill relatively soon.

Congress is working to finish as much appropriations work as possible, against a Nov. 18 deadline, when a stopgap continuing resolution (PL 112-36) that has kept the federal government operating since the fiscal year began Oct. 1 expires. Lawmakers expect a second continuing resolution, lasting at least until mid-December, will be tacked onto the first or second minibus.

Battle Over Health Care

The possibility of a health care showdown rises with the inclusion of the Financial Services bill in the second minibus.

The House version of that measure (HR 2434), approved by the Appropriations panel in June, includes two provisions that would block money for the IRS to implement the health care law. The tax collection agency is charged with determining whether most Americans have health care insurance by 2014, as the law requires.

During action by the Senate Appropriations panel on the Financial Services bill, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., attempted to add a similar IRS amendment. The panel voted 14-16 along party lines to reject Graham’s amendment, and then voted 16-14 to approve the bill for floor action.

That was a departure from the strong bipartisan support in the committee for the two other measures expected to be part of the second minibus.

Graham’s staff said he is considering whether to offer his amendment on the Senate floor. If there is such a floor vote, however, Graham’s amendment is not considered likely to prevail because it would almost certainly require a 60-vote majority.

Still, the issue might prompt a fight in conference. The House has voted more than once since Republicans took control to roll back the health care law. The House passed a stand-alone bill (HR 2) that sought to repeal it, and several amendments have been adopted in an effort to block implementation money. So far, none of those efforts have been accepted by the Senate.

Senate Preparing Second ‘Minibus’

But one ardent House opponent of the health care law, Steve King of Iowa, said he does not expect the issue to be addressed through the appropriations process. Interest among some of his GOP colleagues has waned, King said.

“I have seen the fervor to repeal and defund Obamacare diminish significantly to kind of a flat line,” he said last week.

Obama and Senate Democrats remain committed to preserving the health care overhaul. That makes any rollback highly unlikely in the 112th Congress, and explains why GOP leaders have stopped raising the issue on the floor. “Maybe they were right on that,” said King, who added that his allies “need to bring it back up in the news, so people re-evaluate how they like Obamacare.”

Niels Lesniewski contributed to this story.

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