Budget deadline looms over negotiators

Appropriators and White House officials were trading proposals on the fiscal 2000 Interior, Labor-HHS and Commerce-Justice-State bills Monday night after the bicameral GOP leadership instructed appropriators to wrap up the last five spending bills before the continuing resolution runs out midnight Wednesday. Also pending are the District of Columbia and Foreign Operations measures.

Following a Monday evening meeting of House and Senate Republican leaders, House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., said, "We need to expedite things to get them on the floor and passed by Wednesday." Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., seconded that assessment, saying: "We're serious. We want to get finished" by Veterans Day.

With a late Monday night meeting with Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew pending on Commerce-Justice-State, and another on Labor-HHS set for this morning, Hastert said after the bicameral GOP meeting, "Everything is a work in progress."

The Labor-HHS and Commerce-Justice-State measures are stalled by philosophical differences over whether federal money to hire new teachers may be used for other education priorities, and conservatives' insistence that funds to pay U.N. arrears be released only if the administration accepts restrictions on international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid.

Congress and the White House also must agree on the final funding levels for both conference reports, including a Clinton initiative to hire 50,000 new police officers.

After leaving the bicameral leadership meeting, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., told reporters, "What we'd like to do is get the D.C./Interior package out of here, get it off the table."

Young was hopeful both conference reports could be cleared today, and expected House conferees to accept the Senate version of the D.C. bill, which would allow federal funding of private organizations that run their own needle distribution programs.

Monday afternoon, Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said that after "quite constructive" conversations Sunday with the administration, "It was my genuine feeling that we can write an Interior bill that would be acceptable to the White House and to the Congress." House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, was also optimistic.

But lingering hangups in that bill were still holding up a Senate vote Monday night on the Foreign Operations compromise the House passed last week. Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., had blocked a Senate vote on Foreign Operations over language he wanted in the Interior bill concerning a West Virginia mining matter.

Byrd later dropped the hold, but Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., objected to passing the Foreign Operations bill Monday night by voice vote because of her own objections over the funding source for Clinton's lands legacy initiative, another Interior matter.

At the same time, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, is still negotiating with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers over language Summers wanted in Foreign Operations to allow the IMF to revalue its gold reserves in order to back additional debt relief initiatives.

Geoff Earle and Mark Wegner contributed to this report.