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 (HR 2055). It is the only one of the 12 freestanding, regular appropriations bills for fiscal 2012 that has passed both chambers.

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. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, ranking Republican on the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee.

Some Conflicts Unresolved

Murkowski noted that the Interior bill (HR 2584) is one of several that have controversial elements yet to be resolved.

Some Republicans would like to use the measure to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency through policy riders, but Democrats, including Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, are unlikely to go along in most cases.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Interior-Environment Subcommittee, and his House counterpart, Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, have been engaged in talks for months. Negotiations on their bill have focused on disputes over spending for specific programs, and details about the more controversial riders have been left for later, Reed said.