Senate leaders discuss appropriations bill pace, schedule

Senate Republican leaders are beginning to firm up plans for a major push on fiscal 2006 appropriations bills next month, realizing that space on the floor calendar is dwindling with the August recess around the corner and September potentially dominated by budget reconciliation measures and a possible Supreme Court debate.

Senate leaders are discussing plans to move at least five and as many as seven spending bills before the August recess, including two next week, and leaving larger and more complex measures for this fall.

Unclear is the timing of the Senate's Defense appropriations bill, which the White House and congressional leaders want sent to the president before Sept. 30 to avoid potential interruptions in troop funding.

Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, want to move the $441.6 billion fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill first, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has not yet given the green light for that bill, realizing it took several weeks to complete last year. Frist met with Warner and Stevens to discuss the matter Monday.

"We believe we have to have an authorization bill first to show where the Senate stands on defense as a whole, and I told the leader that," Stevens said.

The bill authorizes funds for all defense-related functions, including President Bush's full $419.3 billion Pentagon request as well as Energy Department accounts. Stevens' subcommittee allocation is $7 billion below the Bush request, in order to provide more funds for domestic appropriations bills, although emergency funds are expected to make up for the shortfall. Stevens said that, given the timing and his subcommittee's jurisdictional mismatch with the House, it was unlikely the bill could be conferenced before the August recess.

Depending on the outcome of the energy bill debate, Senate GOP leaders are considering moving to a $26.2 billion fiscal 2006 Interior spending bill as early as Monday and pushing to complete work on a $30.9 billion fiscal 2006 Homeland Security measure, which aides said is a priority to send to the president's desk before August.

Next month, other candidates for floor action include the Energy and Water, Agriculture, and Commerce-Justice-Science bills, and possibly Legislative Branch and State-Foreign Operations measures. That would leave Labor-HHS, Transportation-Treasury and District of Columbia measures, set to be marked up by the full committee July 14, and the Defense and Military Construction/VA bills. At presstime, the House Appropriations Committee was working on its final two bills, Foreign Operations and Transportation-Treasury, which are set to reach the floor next week.

If the schedule is met, the House will have passed its 11 spending bills before the July Fourth break, a feat that has not been achieved in the decade of House GOP control. The Legislative Branch spending bill will be on the floor Wednesday, followed by Labor-HHS Thursday and Friday.