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Thursday, September 18, 2008
Congress Running Short on Time
It looks like the end of the current congressional session is in sight, maybe. While legislators had an insurmountable work load to complete in the three weeks of work in September, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) still hopes to adjourn the Senate a week from tomorrow (Sept. 26). Reid is hoping the Senate can still finish quite a lot in the next 6 days, including energy legislation, a tax cut extension bill (with an Alternative Minimum Tax patch), a new economic stimulus package, and some number of appropriations bills and a continuing resolution. The Senate might begin consideration of a compromise tax package as early as this afternoon.
The Senate did successfully pass the Defense Authorization bill last night by a 88-8 vote. The authorization bill has been delayed for months, mostly due to a conflict over earmarks being listed in the committee report language for the bill, but not the legislative text of the bill. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) attempted to offer an amendment to effectively strike the $5 billion worth of earmarks in the committee report, but his amendment was not considered. Sen. John Warner (R-VA) attempted to strike a compromise between DeMint and Armed Service Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) by offering an amendment that would require the final bill produced by a House-Senate conference committee list the earmarks in the legislative text of the bill. Neither DeMint's or Warner's amendments were considered, along with almost 100 other amendments that were introduced.
The authorization bill also contains some contracting reform provisions that OMB Watch been following throughout 2008, including a contractor misconduct database first proposed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). While the database is structured to be publicly available in the House version of the authorization bill, the Senate has restricted access to the database just to government personnel.
The House and Senate will need to quickly find compromises to various differences in the two versions as congressional leaders hope to send a final bill to the President before the target adjournment date of Sept. 26. We'll post additional information about the contracting reforms and the earmarking conflict as they become available during the House-Senate conference.
Posted by Adam Hughes
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