Senate Continues to Struggle with Appropriations

Congress is preparing to pass a second continuing resolution (CR), as the first stopgap appropriations measure [1] is set to expire on Oct. 31 and little progress has been made toward completing the remaining appropriations bills in the Senate. As the window of opportunity to pass all the appropriations bills individually continues to close, even the once-optimistic head of the Senate appropriations process has stated that Congress will likely have to use an omnibus spending bill to finish the work before the end of 2009.

The Senate has consistently lagged behind the House in completing appropriations bills in 2009. The House passed all twelve of its appropriations bills very quickly, wrapping up the process on July 30, just before Congress left for its summer recess. In contrast, the Senate – even when incorporating the need for more time due to debate rules in the upper chamber – has not prioritized passage of its spending measures. The Senate managed to pass just half of its twelve appropriations bills before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

With the end of the calendar year looming, which is the stated deadline of Senate Appropriations Chair Daniel Inouye (D-HI) for appropriations work, it is unlikely Congress will pass all twelve appropriations bills individually, especially with major legislation addressing health care reform and climate change taking up a majority of Congress's time. The slow pace of appropriations work has finally taken a toll on the once-optimistic members of the Senate appropriations process.

During the week of Oct. 19, stories began to emerge from Capitol Hill that the once-rosy outlook of senators had turned sour, and legislators were proportionately scaling back expectations. When asked by Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) on Oct. 20, Sen. Inouye acknowledged [2] that Congress would "likely have to pass a multi-bill appropriations package to wrap up this year’s spending work."

Since gaining an extra month under the first CR, the Senate has passed [3] one appropriations bill, the Defense spending measure, and the House and Senate have conferred on three more bills (Agriculture, Energy & Water, and Homeland Security) that were then sent on to the president for his signature.

The Senate still has four appropriations bills left to pass, including the Commerce-Justice-Science, Financial Services, Veterans, and State-Foreign Operations spending measures. Once passed, the Senate must conference those bills with the House. The two chambers are currently conferencing two bills (Defense and Transportation/HUD), and on Oct. 27, the House-Senate conference committee for the Interior and Environment appropriations bill approved the conference report that includes a new CR that will fund the federal government through Dec. 18.

[4]
(click to enlarge)

If an omnibus bill is required, it is not clear which appropriations bills will be included in it. The most likely scenario is that it would include only those bills that have not passed the full Senate chamber. Since the new CR will last until Dec. 18, it is possible the Senate will make more progress on the four remaining bills it has left to pass, leading to a smaller omnibus bill in December.