Key Democrat criticizes Republicans for stalling on spending bills

The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday blasted Republicans for resorting to a continuing resolution in the absence of passing the regular fiscal 2007 domestic spending bills.

Calling the decision "reckless and irresponsible inaction," House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., said this week's passage of a CR punting about $460 billion in fiscal 2007 spending into early next year could complicate action on President Bush's new budget and supplemental spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Either the Congress will be consumed for months trying to pass those remaining bills ... or it will be forced to pass some long-term continuing funding resolution," Obey said in a statement. "Either of those scenarios would represent lousy outcomes, but they would have been made unavoidable by Republican inaction today."

Only two fiscal 2007 spending bills have been signed into law -- the Defense and Homeland Security measures -- leaving all other foreign aid and domestic spending to be funded by a CR at lower funding levels until mid-February.

The House passed all of its spending bills before the July Fourth recess, save one: the Labor-Health and Human Services spending bill, which was complicated by internal GOP squabbles over education and healthcare funding and a potential increase in the minimum wage.

The Senate Appropriations Committee reported all of its bills before the August recess, but each of them represented a time-consuming challenge on the floor for Senate GOP leaders, who made a tactical decision not to bring them up.

The Republicans' "failure is rooted in the inability of House Republicans to convince their Senate counterparts before the election that those bills represented something they could defend on the campaign trail," Obey said. He added that by punting on the remaining bills, Republicans will "forfeit any right to complain about any action that we are forced to take on appropriations bills next year to clean up their chaotic mess."

GOP leaders and the White House are making one last stab at passing the fiscal 2007 Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs bill this week. Senate leaders were able to pass it unanimously as the first order of business after the election, but conservatives wary of efforts to attach unrelated spending and additional earmarks blocked it from going to conference.

The move prompted GOP leaders before Thanksgiving to forgo further action on fiscal 2007 appropriations this year, and the House and Senate Appropriations committees have not been negotiating since then. But Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., have waded into the dispute to try to dislodge the bill, which contains a $3 billion increase for VA medical care over last year.

A spokesman for Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said he might be willing to reconsider his opposition to letting the bill go to conference. "If he receives ironclad public assurances from the Appropriations Committee or Senate leadership that the bill will be clean without an omnibus, he will strongly support allowing it to go forward," the spokesman said.

The measure also could be attached to the CR, but aides in both chambers said at this point it might be too late to iron out the details and put all the paperwork together in time to pass it before the end of the week.