Money matters, leadership elections filling lawmakers' plates

With the elections behind them, lawmakers turn to the unpalatable but necessary task of funding the government.

The vexing task of completing the 10 remaining fiscal 2007 spending bills within tight budget restraints will take center stage this week and into the rest of the lame-duck session.

First up is another continuing resolution to fund the government through Dec. 8, which the House will take up Tuesday and the Senate soon after. That will replace the current CR, which expires Friday.

The only other major activities this week are consideration of a bill dealing with trade with Vietnam and House and Senate leadership elections. Senate Democrats will pick their leaders Tuesday, with Republicans following a day later. House Democrats will elect leaders Thursday, followed by Republicans Friday.

Immediately after the midterm election, it appeared GOP leaders were resigned to simply passing a CR that spilled into next year and letting the 110th Congress try to clean up the mess. But the decision to go with a short-term CR signals a shift in momentum late last week after discussions between President Bush and leaders from both parties yielded agreement to at least try to finish the fiscal 2007 spending bills. Some business might still get kicked over until next year if negotiators run out of time.

Bill Hoagland, budget adviser to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said late last week the endgame's outcome remains wide open. "My sense is the 109th Congress will be in session well into the middle of December, a second and maybe third CR will need to keep government operating, some bills may get done, and some may get rolled into 'mini-buses' and some into a longer CR into next year," he said.

But House Republican leaders might not want to stick around that long, and simply pass a CR keeping the government operating through January, sources said. The best-case scenario would see staff be able to negotiate the fine print next month, requiring members to return briefly to vote on a final package.

But sources said staff would not be authorized to make all the decisions, requiring members' intervention and final sign-off. If they cannot complete all the bills, Republicans might leave the problem at the Democrats' doorstep early next year, just as the Appropriations committees are trying to organize and prepare for Bush's fiscal 2008 budget and a new war supplemental that might range anywhere from $70 billion to $130 billion.

But Republicans also have incentive to wrap things up quickly. The lame duck might be the last chance for Republicans, including outgoing Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, to deliver maximum largess to their constituents.

"It's going to be very hard, but it's in everybody's best interest to get the bills done," a veteran appropriations aide said. "It's the Republicans' last chance to bring home the bacon, and the Democrats would very much like to have a clean slate going into next year."

The Senate, which has not passed any of the 10 outstanding appropriations bills, will attempt to plow through three of them in a week dominated by leadership elections. On tap is the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill and, time allowing, the Energy and Water and State-Foreign Operations bills. The House has passed all spending bills except the one funding the departments of Labor, Education and HHS, but GOP leaders in that chamber are unlikely to bring it up.

The Appropriations committees are left with room for $463.5 billion if they are to comply with the budget cap agreed to earlier this year by Bush and congressional Republicans. Considering the vast, diverse and sensitive areas of the government they must fund -- ranging from veterans' benefits to medical research and overseas humanitarian aid -- that will be no easy feat.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has already approved $5 billion more for domestic programs than the House has agreed to, while senators also tacked on an additional $5 billion in emergency funds for drought relief and space exploration. Democrats and moderate Republicans will also be pressing for another $2 billion-$3 billion to return health and education spending to inflation-adjusted levels of two years ago.

In addition, serious policy differences remain, such as the question of raising the minimum wage, which is attached to the House version of the Labor-Health and Human Services bill. Combine the funding and policy issues with hard feelings and ill moods created by the electoral results, and it could make for a volatile lame-duck cocktail.

Take for example the Interior-Environmental Protection Agency spending bill, which has an allocation of about $26 billion in both chambers and is considered critical due in part to the recent wildfires in the West. Both GOP subcommittee chairmen -- Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns of Montana and House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Charles Taylor of North Carolina -- just lost hard-fought and sometimes nasty re-election campaigns.

"I know both Conrad Burns and Charlie Taylor very well, and I can tell you that right now they are going to have quite a few other things on their minds than conferencing the Department of Interior appropriations bill," said a longtime GOP congressional aide.

Numerous other GOP appropriators in both chambers also lost their seats, including Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Reps. John Sweeney of New York, Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania, Anne Northup of Kentucky, and Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, who vacated his seat to run for governor and was beaten soundly. They are not likely to want to linger around the halls of Congress for long, aides said.