Senate leaders agree on schedule for spending bills

Their differences settled for now, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., have worked out a two-track approach for Senate consideration of fiscal 2001 appropriations bills and limited elements of the Democratic legislative agenda.

Lott said spending bills are now back on top of the chamber's floor schedule through the Independence Day recess.

In separate news conferences today, Lott and Daschle both said the Senate would next pass the FY2001 Defense and Transportation appropriations bills. The Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee is slated to mark up its bill Tuesday morning, and send it to full committee markup that afternoon. Lott indicated the bill could be on the floor late Wednesday or Thursday, and the FY2001 Labor-HHS bill perhaps next week.

Overall, Lott said he still wants to get eight more spending bills through the Senate this month, for a total of 10 before the next recess.

The House planned to return to consideration of its version of the Labor-HHS spending bill Monday. Under a unanimous consent agreement, House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., will offer eight more amendments to restore funding for several of the President's high priority requests, among them class size reduction and teacher training, increasing the maximum Pell grant to low-income college students, and better access to health care for the elderly.

Daschle said his preference is still for the Senate to take up spending measures that already have been approved by the House, but that he would not oppose considering spending bills not acted on by the House--so long as Democrats can still offer their amendments and "get at the pieces we don't support."

That approach would clear the way for the Senate to debate the FY2001 Foreign Operations appropriations bill, which as reported out of committee included supplemental FY2000 funding for counter- narcotics efforts in Colombia. The House provided those funds as part of a larger $12.7 billion supplemental spending package, which also covered peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and emergency disaster relief.

Lott again indicated he is seeking to fold the Colombia aid and disaster relief money into the conference report on the FY2001 Military Construction appropriations bill, to which the Senate attached the FY2000 Defense supplemental spending. He said he is looking for a way to allow for Senate consideration of the Colombia provisions before adding them to the Military Construction conference report.

Lott is continuing to talk with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.,--the leading congressional backer of the Colombia aid package--and their respective Appropriations Committee chairmen, but they still have not settled on the final price tag or substance of FY2000 supplemental provisions that could be added to the Military Construction conference report.

Although he did not give a specific time frame for enacting the supplemental, Lott said Congress should do it "as soon as we can without it becoming a very large spending bill."