Funding for government agencies is among top congressional priorities

January is not typically a busy month for the House and Senate Appropriations committees. But in just the first two weeks of the Obama administration, the spending panels have had their hands full with the largest economic stimulus bill in U.S. history and waiting in the wings is last year's leftovers: a continuing resolution funding the government that expires March 6 and the omnibus package that will be drafted to wrap up fiscal 2009 appropriations.

'The staff is pretty tired," House Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Olver, D-Mass., said last week. "The staff has been strung out for some time working on" the stimulus.

The House on Wednesday passed an $819 billion package 244-188, with no Republicans voting for the measure. The House stimulus includes $43 billion for unemployment benefits and job training, $39 billion to help the unemployed keep employer-provided health care, $20 billion for food stamps and $30 billion for highway construction.

The measure includes $275 billion in tax provisions, including a $500 tax cut for individuals making less than $75,000 a year and a $1,000 cut for couples making less than $150,000 a year.

The Appropriations Committee developed the discretionary spending portion of the legislation, which totals $358 billion in the House. A nearly $900 billion version the Senate is expected to begin considering this week includes a $366 billion discretionary section drafted by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which approved that bill last week.

House and Senate Republicans have rejected the Democratic stimulus offerings because they contend many of the Democratic ideas would not quickly stimulate the economy, and they have instead recommended a litany of tax cuts. They have also said that they have been kept out of the process, with few of their ideas accepted, despite calls for bipartisanship from Obama.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said during debate on the House proposal Wednesday that while most of the spending in the bill "may be well-meaning; it may be well-intentioned; we know it's not going to create jobs."

Senate Republicans have vowed to block the package unless it can be amended to include more tax cuts. "The financial soul of the country may be at stake," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said Thursday.

Olver said the process in drafting the package, which began in earnest after Obama was elected, was difficult because funding levels kept changing. Funding changed due to negotiations with the Senate and as administration officials were appointed and joined the fray.

"This one was especially difficult because ... as they were putting together their teams in different areas ... some of the new key appointees wanted their finger in the pie too, essentially, and numbers kept changing," Olver said.

When the package was unveiled by Democratic leaders in mid-January, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., called it "the largest effort by any legislative body on the planet to try to take government action to prevent economic catastrophe."

His comments came after the Congressional Budget Office announced that the U.S. economy is likely in the most severe recession since World War II. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, who has advised House Democratic leaders on the plan, told the House Budget Committee last week that, "With the stimulus, there will be 3 million more jobs and the jobless rate will be more than 1.5 percentage points lower by the end of 2010 than without any fiscal stimulus."

House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said recently that even though the stimulus was of the utmost importance, the committee needs to move toward the finish line on an omnibus bill that consists of the nine remaining fiscal 2009 appropriations bills that Congress has yet to enact.

"We have to move to the omnibus now, but the main focus has been for us to move this economic recovery package," DeLauro said. "You don't have the luxury of not moving on all tracks at once."

Obey and House Democratic leaders had hoped to take up the package this week after the House considered the stimulus, but Senate Democratic leaders want the House to put it off until the stimulus gets through the Senate. The House is considering the request.

But delaying consideration of the omnibus runs the risk that Congress might have to pass another continuing resolution.

Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that "it wasn't a problem" for the committee to handle its workload.

"I think we should have an fiscal 2009 appropriations bill," she said last week. "We are working on them now; mine's almost done. I think we should go ahead," but she acknowledged that another CR could be in the offing.

Democratic leaders last year settled on funding the government through a CR after former President George W. Bush said that he would veto any spending bills that provide more than what he recommended in his fiscal 2009 budget.

The current CR, approved in September, includes three fiscal 2009 spending bills -- Defense, Military Construction-VA and Homeland Security -- and funds most programs at fiscal 2008 levels.

Completing the fiscal 2009 bills would draw a line for Democratic appropriators to get out from under their contentious relationship with the Bush administration, which held a hard line on the spending bills over the last two years. In addition to fiscal 2009's delayed conclusion, fiscal 2008 was funded through a year-long CR.

"We have some problems from previous years where...we hadn't done appropriations," Senate Appropriations member Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said Wednesday "I really feel, though, that things are moving in the right direction."

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he hopes the process can once again run its intended course from subcommittee, to full committee, to the Senate floor and then a conference with the House.

"We were held up last time," said Nelson. "I want to get back to regular order, because I think it's the one way that you can do things where you can keep some control over spending."

He added that he hopes that in the next fiscal year that funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can be handled through the regular budget instead of emergency supplemental legislation, as has been the case.

Obama's budget outline could come as soon as the middle of February, OMB Director Peter Orszag said in remarks during his confirmation hearing. The full budget is expected sometime in March.

House Budget Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said last week he understands Obama's budget will contain some spending restrictions, but he did not say what.

He added that the administration might seek to make pay/go law, a key tenet for fiscally conservative Democrats, such as the Blue Dog Coalition.

"They are going to make some substantial concession to the pay/go concept, what form it takes I haven't seen yet, but it will be more than cosmetic," Spratt said.