Appropriations Behind Schedule

As Congress heads into the July 4th recess, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is not happy with the lack of progress the House is making with the fiscal year 2008 (FY08) appropriations bills. As of this point, the House has passed only six of the twelve spending bills, far short of Hoyer’s promise to have all bills passed before the week-long July 4th recess. In addition, five of the six remaining bills have not even been reported out of committee. Although the Senate appears to be moving along on schedule, delays in the House could spell trouble for the new Democratic majority.

Throughout the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats pointed out the Republican majority consistently failed to pass all appropriation bills before the beginning of the new fiscal year, leading to a number of omnibus bills and continuing resolutions. The Democrats promised to succeed where the Republicans had failed. The Democrats got off to a rocky start when they decided to pass one final continuing resolution for fiscal year 2007 (FY07) appropriations bills, though they blamed the former Republican majority for failing to finish work on the FY07 bills before the new majority took control. The bill passed and the Democrats declared victory, and prepared to move on the FY08 issues.
Although it took Congress longer to pass the FY08 budget resolution than Democratic leaders planned, the ball started rolling and the new majority seemed to be on its way to fulfill one of their biggest campaign promises. However, when Republicans began to complain about the earmark timetable that House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) set up, the clouds began to form. The storm finally broke as the Appropriations Committee postponed its markup of the Labor-HHS-Education bill. As the earmark debate created additional barriers for bills already on the House floor, Chairman Obey decided to send bills back to committee, such that each bill can come to the House floor with all earmarks already attached. This put the remaining bill into a holding pattern until the first few bills are reconsidered.
When Congress comes back on July 9th, the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to work on the Labor-HHS-Education bill, as well as all the other remaining bills. This gives appropriators four weeks to finish as much as they can before the month-long August recess begins on Sunday, August 5th. To pass all of the appropriation bills, the Congress must report every remaining bill out of committee, pass the bills through their respective chambers, go to conference, and get past the White House, which has threatened vetoes on bills that go too far over the President’s requested funding levels. House Republicans claim they have enough votes to sustain a veto, which means even if Congress can finish every bill before August, it will have about four weeks in September to reconsider any bill that the President vetoes. The final choice may be to combine multiple bills into one large omnibus appropriations package, a tactic that Democrats once condemned Republicans for using. The outlook at this point is not promising.
Author: SAS