CQ NEWS – APPROPRIATIONS
Dec. 5, 2011 – 10:17 p.m.
Talks Continue on Fiscal 2012 Spending, but Some Big Differences Remain
By Kerry Young, CQ Staff
>Congressional appropriators insist they are making progress toward wrapping up nine overdue fiscal 2012 spending measures by the middle of this month, although serious concerns remain about several of the uncompleted measures.
A House GOP aide said Monday that a package that combines the unfinished bills might be ready by next week. And although Senate appropriators stressed that much work remains, they said productive talks continue.
How lawmakers get to the end of the line is far from certain. It may not be possible to complete all the appropriations measures before a stopgap continuing resolution (PL 112-55) runs out on Dec. 16. And it may not be possible to roll up all of the remaining fiscal 2012 bills into one “megabus” measure. But that appears to be the goal.
There have been discussions about splitting off parts of the appropriations package, such as emergency spending, another House aide said.
But such an approach would require House Republican leaders to schedule multiple controversial votes on spending measures. On final passage, 101 House Republicans voted against the minibus and more Democrats voted for the measure than did GOP lawmakers.
One option available to appropriators that would limit the number of floor votes would be to convene a House-Senate conference committee on the Military Construction-VA bill (
A resulting conference agreement would be expected to incorporate the negotiated agreement on the remaining spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. That conference agreement would go to the House and Senate for a final vote in each chamber.
Several lawmakers said they hope their talks will lead to an appropriations agreement soon.
“We are running out of daylight, but the negotiations are continuing, and I think that is good news,” said Sen.
Some Conflicts Unresolved
Murkowski noted that the Interior bill (
Some Republicans would like to use the measure to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency through policy riders, but Democrats, including Senate Appropriations Chairman
Sen.
Talks Continue on Fiscal 2012 Spending, but Some Big Differences Remain
“We’re moving forward,” said Reed, who declined to speculate on when a conference report might be hammered out. “There’s just a strong consensus from the White House and Sen. Inouye that these riders are not, both in substance and procedure, appropriate.”
The Interior measure is not the only point of contention among the nine unfinished bills.
The Labor-HHS-Education bill (
“We have had long discussions,” said Sen.
The Labor-HHS measure may be the bill most deeply mired. Sen.
“Sen. Harkin and I were talking some last week, but we’ve got some tough obstacles to overcome,” suggesting that their bill might have to be put off with a further continuing resolution.
“I’d like to see us get it resolved,” Shelby said. “Maybe we will. If we don’t, I guess it will go toward a continuing resolution.”
At least three of the remaining fiscal 2012 measures are unlikely to cause many hitches for appropriators or House and Senate leaders.
Negotiations on the Defense bill (
And Sen.
Sen.
“Milcon has been ready for months,” Kirk said. “Our bill is done.”
Niels Lesniewski contributed to this story.