Congress and White House Continue Budget Debate

The Budget debate raged on last month, and both Congress and the President traded remarks regarding the fight over fiscal year 2008 (FY08) appropriations. While the Senate took a week-long break, House leaders continued commenting on the current standoff with some asking for a budget summit while others levied threats regarding other White House initiatives. When the Senate comes back next week, there will still be a lot for work to do, and not very much time to do it.

On October 7 at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, Maryland, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) spoke with the President regarding the appropriations problem. Both agreed that a government shutdown would be bad policy, but the White House continues to assert its stance that Congress should not exceed the spending limits proposed in the President’s Budget. The President has also stated his opposition to any sort of budget summit before Congress passes any of its spending bills. Instead, he has continued to call for Congress to conference on the twelve different spending bills and send them to his desk.

Meanwhile, House Budget Chairman John Spratt (D-SC), speaking at the National Press Club on Tuesday, said that House Democratic leaders might hold up passing an emergency appropriations bill for the Iraq War until next year in order to gain “leverage” with the White House in fiscal 2008 spending negotiations. Another option, for the sake of finishing work on appropriations before Christmas, Democrats may be willing to lower their spending now, only to restore that funding in next year’s war supplemental, a bill that the President is very unlikely to veto.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has stated his intention to send at least one spending bill to the President before the beginning of November. Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) suggested that his subcommittee’s bill might be the first to reach the President’s desk. Next week, after finishing work on the Commerce spending bill, the Senate plans to move on to the Labor-HHS-Education bill. Harkin expects a quick conference, and wants to send the bill to the President by November 1. Once the President signs the bill, or follows through on his veto threat, Congress will have a clearer picture of what direction they need to go in order to get their spending priorities past the President’s desk.

Resources:
George Cahlink, “Spratt: House Democrats Could Delay War Supplemental to Gain Spending Talks Leverage,” Congress Now, October 9, 2007.
Alan K. Ota and David Clarke, “White House Dashes Talk of Budget Summit,” CQ Today, October 10, 2007.
Author: SAS