Omnibus negotiations on the move, but no agreement yet
Negotiations on an omnibus package of incomplete fiscal 2005 appropriations bills appear to be moving rapidly, with aides involved in a flurry of meetings throughout this week and possibly into the weekend.
The real heavy lifting will have to be done when lawmakers begin returning Monday, and there is some skepticism that a final deal can be struck by Nov. 20, when the current continuing resolution expires at midnight. If no agreement is reached, another short-term CR might be required for a couple of days.
Discussions also continue about a year-long CR for programs funded by the fiscal 2005 Energy and Water appropriations bill, which remains stuck in a dispute over how to fund the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. But for the other eight spending bills, aides were generally positive about completing an omnibus package. The vehicle for that overall bill is shaping up to be the fiscal 2005 Foreign Operations appropriations bill conference report. Conferees were appointed before the break. Congress also must increase the statutory debt ceiling of $7.384 trillion before adjourning. While apeculation has swirled that it would be in the omnibus; aides said GOP leaders have not made a final decision.
The gap is being steadily narrowed between the House and Senate on additional spending requested by Senate appropriators and the White House is expected to get most, if not all, of its requests appropriators did not fund. The Senate initially added $8.1 billion to its version of the fiscal 2005 spending bills, mostly to the VA-HUD and Labor-HHS measures, although that total has come down significantly.
While Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, made liberal use of emergency designations and other gimmicks to get around spending caps, the White House has said it would not support that approach. Thus negotiations have centered on what are considered "real offsets" for spending above the fiscal 2005 discretionary cap of $821.9 billion. That will include an across-the-board cut of less than 1 percent, which will allow about $3 billion in extra spending. Aides said that total is likely to increase by an additional $1 billion or more through other savings.
On top of congressional priorities such as education and healthcare funds, the administration was likely to receive close to its full requests for additional NASA and Millennium Challenge Account funds. The House bill would have cut about $1.1 billion from the White House request for NASA and $1.25 billion for the Millennium Challenge program, a new foreign aid program initiated by the administration. Complicating matters is a plethora of late-inning project requests from lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol, particularly in the Senate, sources said.
But unlike previous years, final negotiations are unlikely to be plagued by inclusion of controversial authorization bills. One such measure that will not be tucked into the omnibus is legislation favored by Northeastern and Midwestern lawmakers to extend the Milk Income Loss Contract program, which provides subsidies to small dairy farmers to compensate for low milk prices. The MILC program, a campaign centerpiece of both Bush and Kerry campaigns in Wisconsin, will expire next Sept. 30 if it is not extended.