Congress Will Never Finish Appropriations

Several stories this week from Capitol Hill are painting a bleak picture for the appropriations process this year. Just weeks ago, legislators thought that the process would only take until November, tops. Now it seems they'll be lucky to be done by the end of the year, and hopefully won't have to cram everything into an omnibus bill.

Since Congress passed [2] a continuing resolution (CR) at the end of September, the Senate has moved only one of its six appropriations bills that remained at the end of last month. Once the Senate gets through its five remaining bills, the upper and lower chambers will still have eight bills to conference and get to the president for his signature. With a little over one week left in October, Congress will have to pass another continuing resolution to keep the government funded while it sorts out these spending matters.

Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) reported [3] last week that House leadership is already designing a CR, and reported today that it seems that the measure is going to be a stand-alone bill, which would leave it open to amendments in the Senate. The advisability of offering the CR up on its own, as opposed to adding it to a conference report like the last one, is unclear. It is unlikely that Democrats would offer any amendments to the CR since it is a stopgap measure that would be needed to continue government, but it is unclear if Republicans might offer something.

In addition, Congressional Quarterly reported [4] Tuesday that legislators are acknowledging that Congress will have to resort to packaging a few appropriations measures into an omnibus spending bill to finish up before the end of the year, a goal of Senate Appropriations Chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI). How many bills get crammed into that omnibus bill depends on if the appropriations process picks up in the Senate, which of late has seen week-long marathons of debate for each its spending measures. With health care and climate legislation ready to take up a majority of the body's time over the next few months, things do not look good.

And, one final note on appropriations, it seems that transparency took a hit when Congress passed the FY 2010 Energy and Water spending bill last week. Again, Congressional Quarterly reported [5] that conferees melding the House and Senate versions of the appropriations bill stripped a provision requiring public disclosure of reports called for in appropriations bills. The loss of the provision upset Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who held up a vote on cloture to accept the conference report for 26 hours.

Image by Flickr user hyperbolic pants explosion [6] used under a Creative Commons license.