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Nov. 16, 2011 – 7:57 p.m.

As ‘Minibus’ Stalls, It’s All Aboard the Omnibus

By Kerry Young and Niels Lesniewski, CQ Staff

With the apparent collapse of the Senate leadership strategy of packaging overdue spending bills in small bundles, the top House appropriator is preparing to wrap the remaining bills into a single measure.

During a meeting of the Rules Committee on Wednesday, Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., outlined his plan for an omnibus package including nine of the regular spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Congress “will have to put together a rest of the bus,” Rogers said.

The chairman’s comments came as the Rules panel debated procedures for House action on a three-bill “minibus” (HR 2112 — H Rept 112-284) that is expected to be the first fiscal 2012 appropriations measure enacted.

A conference committee completed work on the minibus earlier this week, and the House is expected to adopt the conference agreement on Thursday — perhaps by a close margin.

The Senate is expected to clear the bill as well before adjourning for a week-long Thanksgiving break.

House Republican leaders worked Wednesday to win support for the minibus, although Democrats appeared confident their side would deliver the needed votes.

Dan Benishek of Michigan, a freshman member of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said there had been two GOP meetings Wednesday on the bill.

Some Republicans object to the overall spending levels and to a provision that would increase the size of mortgages the Federal Housing Administration may insure.

Benishek had been uncommitted until late Wednesday, when he said he will back the measure. “It’s a compromise,” he said. “We need to move forward.”

Strategy Falters

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., drove the strategy of packaging fiscal 2012 appropriations into a series of minibuses, and he had little difficulty winning passage of the first one, which contains the spending bills for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development.

But Reid ran into trouble with his second minibus (HR 2354), which was to be built on the Energy-Water measure and include two more controversial bills — Financial Services and State-Foreign Operations.

As ‘Minibus’ Stalls, It’s All Aboard the Omnibus

Several senators blocked Reid’s unanimous consent request to combine the three bills. And although the Senate continued to debate the Energy-Water bill on Wednesday, a list of unresolved amendments to it remained and Reid decided to set the measure aside in favor of the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill (S 1867). Although the majority leader held out the possibility of returning to the Energy-Water measure at a later date, there was no clear plan to do so.

No Big ‘CR’

Rogers said he is determined to finish the year’s appropriations cycle with new spending laws, and not repeat the fiscal 2011 experience, when most appropriations were settled through a continuing resolution (PL 112-36).

“There will not be a big CR,” Rogers said.

The conference report on the minibus does include a stopgap continuing resolution to keep the government running through Dec. 16 and allow Congress time to finish the remaining appropriations. The stopgap CR that is currently keeping the government operational (PL 112-36) expires Nov. 18.

Appropriators will have about two weeks to pull the omnibus together after the Thanksgiving recess. A House rule requires a bill’s text to be available three days before it comes to a vote. That means the measure might need to be posted by Dec. 13 in order to be passed before the expiration of the pending CR.

Rogers had long been skeptical of the strategy pursued by Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to avoid an omnibus by moving a series of smaller bundles of spending bills.

The House chairman says he shares the distaste of many lawmakers for giant spending bills, but he said publicly as early as September that he intended to use a single omnibus to expedite fiscal 2012 appropriations.

The omnibus approach spares House Republican leaders from scheduling difficult spending votes that would divide their majority. And in the case of both the minibus and a future omnibus, GOP leaders are counting on votes for passage from Democrats, because many conservative GOP members are likely to oppose the measures.

Bipartisan cooperation had also been key to the Senate’s minibus strategy. But the difficulty of containing the number of amendments on appropriations bills in the Senate — and the controversial nature of many of those amendments — made the minibus strategy problematic.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday these factors made an omnibus more likely.

Alan K. Ota contributed to this story.

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