CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Sept. 7, 2012 – 9:56 p.m.
Stopgap Funding Bill on Fast Track
By Kerry Young, CQ Staff
The House may vote as early as this week on a stopgap funding measure, a compromise aimed at allowing lawmakers to return to their campaigns without the threat of a potential government shutdown hanging over the elections.
Appropriators might unveil as early as Tuesday the text of a fiscal 2013 continuing resolution that would keep the federal government running from October through March. Leaders in both chambers and the White House announced a bipartisan agreement for a CR before leaving for the August recess. Republican conservatives agreed to temporarily accept a small bump in spending to get Democrats to agree to delay final budget decisions until the next session of Congress.
Each party is betting it will then hold the White House.
Lawmakers are anxious to prevent a repeat of the near-shutdowns of 2011 that eroded the confidence of the public and financial markets in the federal government, especially so close to the November elections. At the same time, many members of Congress would rather be back in their districts and states, campaigning for either their own seats or trying to win over voters in the tight race between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney, said G. William Hoagland, a former senior Senate staff member for budget and appropriations.
“These people are driven by polls,” said Hoagland, who will take a position next week as senior vice president with the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center. “They want to get back out as quickly as possible.”
The measure is being written to reflect the $1.047 trillion fiscal 2013 cap set on the federal government’s operating expenses by the 2011 debt limit law (PL 112-25). House Republicans earlier this year attempted to lower the cap to $1.028 trillion.
Conservatives have said they can only back the higher $1.047 trillion spending limit if the CR is “clean,” or largely free of the kinds of add-on provisions that have been routinely attached to CRs in the past. This may make it difficult for leaders if they want to attach extraneous measures, such as an extension of the farm bill.
“That wasn’t part of the deal” on the CR,
“Preventing the completely predictable effort to turn a lame-duck CR into a massive catchall omnibus is one of the main reasons conservatives pushed the six-month strategy in the first place,” a House GOP aide said.
House Appropriations Chairman
CBO Sets Targets
Although there will be little change in the total amount of spending allowed, appropriators have been working with the Congressional Budget Office to make sure that the amount of spending allowed in the CR, or budget authority, comes in line with the $1.047 trillion fiscal 2013 spending cap.
Stopgap Funding Bill on Fast Track
For the full budget year, that would represent an increase from the initial budget authority of $1.043 trillion provided by law for fiscal 2012. CBO has examined how much spending would result from simply extending fiscal 2012 spending laws and pegged that number at $1.039 trillion in fiscal 2013 budget authority.
To calculate this figure, CBO analysts looked at savings made in fiscal 2012 appropriations and attempted to see if they could be applied for the new budget year, such as checking whether enough money remained for a rescission to be repeated. CBO also added back some unexpectedly high receipts that are credited against spending, such as money paid to the Federal Housing Administration.
This may give appropriators some flexibility in dealing with anomalies, or they could spread the difference between CBO’s estimate and the fiscal 2013 cap across federal agencies.
Still, a bump of $8 billion for the fiscal year likely won’t translate into greatly increased spending. As happens routinely with new spending laws, the White House Office of Management and Budget will issue instructions to agencies on how to apportion these funds for the first half of fiscal 2013. “Because of the nature of CRs, you should operate at a minimal level until after your regular appropriation is enacted,” OMB has said in previous guidance to agencies on operating under stopgap funding.
And beyond the normal cautions, agency leaders are expected to be extremely conservative in their spending from October to March due to the automatic spending cuts, also known as sequestration, set to begin Jan. 2.
In many years, managers of federal agencies can look at unfinished versions of House and Senate spending bills and come up with a good estimate of how much their programs likely would get for a budget year. For fiscal 2013, however, that won’t be possible.
Although House and Senate appropriators each have approved 11 of their dozen annual spending bills, it’s far from certain when fiscal 2013 decisions will be made and what will happen to many programs. First, Congress has yet to make any serious bipartisan effort to head off the sequester. Without a new agreement, many agencies could see their spending authority cut in January by roughly 9 percent.
Regardless of whether Congress acts on the sequester, it will need to address fiscal 2013 discretionary spending by March.
There are three likely options for handling this overdue budget work. If Congress is immersed in urgent tax and spending questions, lawmakers might put in place another six-month CR. Or appropriators could resume work on their unfinished bills and pull together a package or two of fiscal 2013 spending measures.
If Republicans take control of the Senate and the White House, they may also decide to set aside much of the work already accomplished on fiscal 2013 bills and start pressing immediately for deep spending cuts.