House and Senate GOP leaders and the Appropriations Committee chairmen met Wednesday to keep trying to align funding levels of their respective fiscal 2000 bills and synchronize their appropriations floor schedules, and to ponder potential savings to direct toward domestic spending bills now marked for deep cuts.
Although no final decisions were made, the members and staffers attending the session were upbeat about passage of most, if not all, of the 13 annual appropriations bills, and about finding the budget savings to pass bills that meet the $538 billion statutory spending cap.
Said one source in the meeting, "There was a harmonic convergence on ends, not means." That indicated GOP leaders want to stick to the cap and pass appropriations bills that can move quickly through conference committee, but that they have not agreed on which budget savings devices to use to stay under the cap.
Participants did agree to get the Defense appropriations bill out of Congress "before the 4th of July," Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said.
The Senate passed its $264.7 billion FY2000 Defense bill Tuesday on a 93-4 vote, but the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has yet to mark up legislation.
Several GOP sources confirmed that the House's Defense bill likely will use all of its $270 billion allocation.
But they said that number would drop in conference with the Senate, making the difference available to non-defense appropriations bills the House will consider later, and adding to the urgency to get a final Defense bill by the July 4th recess.
Lott also said the Senate plans to vote next on the Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Transportation appropriations bills.
The Senate Appropriations Committee will mark up the Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Commerce-Justice- State bills today.
House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said earlier Wednesday that the Legislative Branch bill should be on the floor next week, with Transportation to follow.
While Lott acknowledged the level of savings the Senate will be able to get "is not clear yet," several GOP sources said options are available, such as cutting additional spending from the first appropriations bills considered, finding savings in entitlement programs based on lower than anticipated spending, altering how appropriations bills are scored and, perhaps, using a larger revenue estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, already has applied $2.6 billion in anticipated FY2000 revenue from broadcast spectrum auctions to his subcommittee allocations, and set aside another $3.1 billion in advance Defense appropriations to be redirected to non-defense spending bills. House sources said they hope that directing the CBO to rescore some bills using tighter OMB numbers will yield $2.5 billion to $3 billion.