With the end of the fiscal year quickly approaching and legislative days slipping away, House Republicans still do not have the votes to pass the Labor-HHS appropriations bill and are unsure how to resolve the disputes hounding the measure, a key House GOP aide said Monday.
The GOP's intraparty feud over the bill's rule remains unsolved and Republican leaders did little last week to solve the differences, sources said.
House conservatives and moderates remain deadlocked over the rule, with conservatives insisting on protection for a provision requiring parental notification for teens receiving contraceptives from federally financed family planning programs.
Moderates do not want that provision protected and are unhappy with funding provisions in the bill.
The bill is "seemingly in gridlock," one source said. "The leadership is going to have to make decisions." Meetings scheduled last week on the issue did not occur, they said.
Meanwhile, House conservatives continue to warn their leaders not to push plans to designate certain spending in the fiscal 1999 spending bills as emergency and therefore outside spending caps.
An aide to a House conservative said that one plan being considered would combine emergency spending provisions with a tax cut.
"We are not going to support any tax bill that is connected to emergency spending," the aide said. "We're not going to support $20 billion in emergency spending for $80 billion in tax cuts."
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