Defense spending bill delayed, omnibus considered

On Tuesday, Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, scrapped plans to move forward with a markup of the fiscal 2005 Defense appropriations bill and said he will delay full committee markups of the other spending bills until the Senate completes its work on the defense authorization bill on the floor.

Stevens told reporters that while his committee is "prepared to go on a moment's notice," almost 200 amendments remain pending to the defense authorization bill. Since many of those could cost millions in additional spending, Stevens said it makes little sense to move spending measures through the committee.

Senate Budget Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., also said that he and Stevens have talked about wrapping together fiscal 2005 appropriations bills into a single omnibus, or perhaps rolling several bills into a smaller omnibus while letting other bills move individually.

"It's not a very good way to manage the appropriations process, but it may be the only way," Nickles told reporters about the omnibus approach. But an omnibus strategy in the Senate would require House concurrence, Nickles said. "I think we have to be in tandem," he added.

The House is already moving its appropriations bills separately, but Nickles said the House could then aggregate some of them into omnibus.

Stevens said his decision to postpone action on the Defense appropriations bill only applied to his subcommittee, and that other Appropriations subcommittee chairmen could continue their work. Stevens said he was not sure if the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee could still finish work on that bill before the next recess.

"You don't leave a defense bill hanging out there" over a recess, he said. Nickles also suggested six or seven spending bills might be grouped together in an omnibus, and the rest covered by a year-long continuing resolution, but Stevens objected to that approach, saying he did not favor a year-long CR for anything.