Congress to pull all-nighters on spending bills

Beginning the high-level haggling needed to close the end-of- year funding deals, congressional Republican leaders and White House officials late Wednesday said they hope to finish work on the issues by this weekend, but cautioned it will require several all-night sessions.

"I think we made some reasonable progress in general," White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles told reporters after meeting with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. "I think we've got a chance and we're going to be working hard all night long." Asked whether any issues had been settled, Bowles said, "Nothing's resolved until everything's resolved."

Gingrich cautioned that there are at least 12 major and 30 minor issues that remain to be resolved. "There are substantial differences on a wide range of issues," Gingrich said after the meeting.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., said negotiations were progressing on two levels: Congressional leaders and the White House were attempting to settle non- appropriations issues such as family planning, census sampling and the International Monetary Fund.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said he expects the IMF talks to continue today, most likely with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. At the same time, administration officials and appropriators are negotiating last-minute funding levels for bills that are likely to be included in the omnibus funding package. Many of those issues have been settled, Livingston said.

"The big issues are in the leadership-White House ballpark," he said. "Most of the money issues have been resolved. Most of the problems that divide us are legislative."

Livingston said he fully expects the administration to insist on additional funds for the Labor-HHS funding bill, its top funding priority.

Livingston said the administration has said it will present offsetting cuts for those increases, adding that he does not object to that funding if the cuts are attached. "If he does his offsets, it doesn't matter," he said.

Livingston said he is not disturbed by the expected veto of the Agriculture funding measure. "Vetoes have always been anticipated," he said. "After vetoes come negotiations."

Asked about unhappiness by some House Republican conservatives who say Republican leaders are caving in to White House demands, Livingston said, "I'm sure that if we had another six months in the legislative calendar, we could have done better."

He said, however, that no one knows how many of the last- minute fights will be resolved.

House Republicans Wednesday night broke loose one contentious funding measure, passing the Treasury-Postal bill, 290-137. GOP conferees dropped four contentious legislative riders-much to the chagrin of many Democrats.

In other appropriations developments Wednesday, aides said House and Senate conferees have tentatively reached agreement on an fiscal 1999 transportation appropriations bill.

But because transportation might still become part of the omnibus bill, aides said they could not release details of the agreement. If transportation is placed in the omnibus bill, its funding levels could change.

Clinton Wednesday evening signed the Energy and Water spending bill.

But House Education and the Workforce Chairman Goodling will hold hostage a bipartisan literacy bill desired by Clinton until the White House agrees to retain a provision in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that prohibits field trials of a new national standards test for primary and secondary school students, aides said.

Last year's appropriations agreement allowed the administration to continue developing the test, but prohibited field trials until authorized by Congress. Now that the test is developed, the administration wants to take the next step of field trials.

Clinton says a national test is needed so students and schools districts can gauge how well they are doing; Republicans argue a national test will result in a nationalized curriculum that usurps the power of local school districts.

Goodling is threatening to hold back the Reading Excellence Act, which passed the House last year and passed the Senate this week by unanimous consent.

The bill provides more than $200 million for each of the next two years to better train teachers to teach reading skills.

Meanwhile, a group of House Republicans sent Gingrich and Armey a letter asking them to pass automatic continuing resolution legislation as soon as possible. Such a plan would ensure that Clinton could not force the federal government to the brink of a government shutdown.

Matthew Morrissey also contributed to this article.