New fiscal year arrives; several spending bills unfinished
New fiscal year arrives; several spending bills unfinished
As fiscal 2000 begins, Congress has sent five appropriations bills to the President and completed, but not yet passed, another conference report, with the remaining seven bills in various stages from markup to conference committee.
With spending debates continuing to drag on, President Clinton signed a continuing resolution Thursday keeping agencies open until Oct. 21.
Of the completed appropriations bills, Clinton has signed Military Construction, Treasury-Postal, Legislative Branch and Energy and Water into law and vetoed the District of Columbia bill. In addition, conferees finalized the Transportation appropriations package Wednesday evening, but as of Thursday afternoon, neither chamber had passed it.
Conference committees are nearing completion on the Defense, Agriculture and Foreign Operations bills, and work is pending on the Commerce-Justice-State, Interior and VA-HUD bills. The Senate is currently debating the final FY2000 bill, Labor-HHS, while the House version of the bill was being marked up by the House Appropriations Committee Thursday afternoon.
Regardless of how far along in the legislative process they are, several of the outstanding FY2000 bills face administration veto threats. To date, the White House has said it would veto the Senate version of the Interior bill as well as the Foreign Operations, Commerce- Justice-State, VA-HUD and Labor-HHS bills as they now stand.
A House Appropriations panel staffer said Thursday that the necessary conference signatures have been gained on the Agriculture spending bill, and that the conference report might be filed Thursday evening.
As the House Appropriations Committee began marking up the FY2000 Labor-HHS spending bill Thursday, Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., strongly criticized the bill. Obey said Republicans "were twisting this bill into knots and turning it into a joke," and accused them of tapping $11 billion of the Social Security surplus for appropriations for the next fiscal year.