Congress will be hard-pressed to finish spending bills by Sept. 30

As Congress prepares to leave for August recess, the House, which adjourned last week, has completed work on all 12 appropriations bills, and the Senate is expected to be a third of the way done when it departs Friday.

But despite the progress, appropriators will be hard-pressed to finish their work before the end of the fiscal year, with less than a month left for the Senate to pass the remaining eight bills and resolve differences with the House on all 12.

While appropriators are intent on trying to finish by the Sept. 30 sunset of the fiscal year, some recently conceded that a short-term extension of funding might be needed.

"It could happen, but the goal is still to try to get them done" by the end of September, said Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ben Nelson, D-Neb. "This is the point in time when everyone starts wondering whether it gets done. I don't think it's time to panic yet."

Senate Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., said meeting the Sept. 30 deadline "is going to be really hard to do, as it always is, with the time it takes to move a bill to the floor ... but I think we are making good progress and we are going to keep pushing."

House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., thinks a short-term continuing resolution appears increasingly likely. "I think we probably will have a CR; I would give it a 60 percent chance at this point," he said.

Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said that even if a short-term CR is needed, it would be a small price to pay to get the bills done individually.

"I remain hopeful that we can get the bills done and avoid a CR, but even if we had to do a short-term CR, I think we would like to get all the bills done, get them done routinely, get them signed by the president, and get back on track the way Congress is supposed to work," Dorgan said.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said he is not thinking about a CR and is still focused on getting the bills done on time.

Democratic appropriations staffers point to one factor that made this year more difficult than usual: The fact that -- because this is President Obama's first year in office -- they received his budget request later than they otherwise would, which shortened the time to do their jobs. They expect that next year they will be better positioned to finish the fiscal 2011 bills on time.

Nevertheless, Democratic leaders and appropriators have been adamant about finishing the fiscal 2010 bill individually and avoiding, at the 11th hour, having to wrap the bills into an omnibus, as was done for the fiscal 2009 cycle.

A standoff between congressional Democrats and former President George W. Bush over spending levels resulted in Congress putting off action on all but three of the fiscal 2009 appropriations bills until after November's election. Once Obama took office, the remaining nine fiscal 2009 bills were packaged and enacted in March in a $410 billion omnibus.

"There has been an absolute commitment to get our appropriation bills done," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said last week during Senate consideration of the $34.3 billion fiscal 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

"We are behind schedule even now," Reid continued. "We don't want another big omnibus bill. We want to do these appropriations bill [individually] ... and we are going to be able to say when we leave here this work period that we at least got a third of them done before the August break. We are going to come back in September and continue to work through these."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday that final passage of all 12 spending bills for fiscal 2010 might not be possible before the new fiscal year -- and that a short-term CR may be needed. Hoyer said his understanding is that the Senate is "working very hard on getting four or five or six of the remaining bills to the floor in September." But he said, "they may not get all eight remaining bills. ... To the extent that they do, we'll go to conference on those and pass as many bills as we can pass prior to Sept. 30, when the fiscal year ends." If that can't happen, he said, "We may need a very short-term CR for those remaining bills."

Lawmakers typically dislike omnibus packages because they are more difficult to scrutinize and tend to be rushed through to avoid a government shutdown or a long-term CR, which tends to flat-fund most government agencies.

The Senate last week completed action on the Energy and Water bill, and is expected to finish work on the $23.7 billion fiscal 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill by the end of the week. Those two, along with passage of the $42.9 billion Homeland Security and $3.1 billion Legislative Branch spending measures earlier in the year, would bring the total number of fiscal 2010 spending bills to be completed by the Senate to four.

One of the main issues that threatens to slow the process in the Senate is the dearth of floor time, as the Senate is poised to consider healthcare legislation and possibly legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

"The biggest complication, of course, is the healthcare debate, which is going to be a very significant and extensive debate in September when we get back," said one veteran appropriator, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. Getting the bills done next month "is really a function of floor time," she said.

Another factor is whether Senate Republicans will choose to slow the process as they seek to criticize Democratic spending priorities.

"If the Republicans stall everything out, then we are not likely [to finish by Sept. 30,] but if they do, sure we could," said Senate State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she expects Republicans to be relatively cooperative since they, too, want to avoid a long-term CR or an omnibus.

"I am committed to working with my colleagues to make sure that happens," Murkowski said.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who frequently challenges what he considers wasteful spending, also said he wants Congress to finish the bills individually.

"There is no effort to slow" the process down, Coburn said. "There is an effort to bring sunlight to it ... and transparency and to offer amendments so the American people can see what a lousy job they are doing."

In the House, Democratic appropriators are proud to have passed all 12 of the bills, but Republicans say it came at a price -- shutting them out of the process.

To get the bills done by the August recess, House Democratic leaders sought time agreements for debate on the bills from House Republicans, but no agreement was ever reached.

Democrats ultimately decided to limit the number of amendments that could be offered by setting a deadline for when they must be filed with the Rules Committee, a move Republicans said was not typically done and would squelch their rights to offer amendments and change the bills.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., argued that structured rules were used by Republicans when they were in the majority and therefore was nothing new.

In protest, Republicans in mid-June forced a record 53 roll-call votes in one day in connection with the $64.4 billion fiscal 2010 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill, the first spending bill to come to the House floor, which forced the delay and cancellation of House committee hearings and markups and other business before the bill was approved.

"We've done our job," said House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Norman Dicks, D-Wash. "It's been rugged and difficult. I wish it could have been more open, but that takes cooperation on both sides and at the start."

House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said "I think it went as good as it could have ... The structured rule has worked."

Some House Appropriations cardinals had contemplated requesting no limits on amendments for their bills, despite the tight schedule set by Democratic leaders, but they had a change of heart after the C-J-S bill fracas.

"The disappointment, of course, is that we have had to be so limited on the floor in the normal debate procedure, but I think the Republicans pretty much made their own bed on that. They showed that they had disruptive intent. And when there was a pause and, a member like myself, was ready to ask for a more open rule with respect to our bill, then they pulled off that stunt ... forcing 53 roll call votes," said House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Price, D-N.C.

Republicans have warned that Democrats have set a dangerous precedent that will ultimately come back to haunt them.

"To me, they have damaged this process more than they will ever know, because some day this will be used as a precedent," said House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.

House Republicans criticized Democrats on the issue in every debate on the 12 bills and the acrimony did not abate for the last spending bill, the $636.3 billion fiscal 2010 Defense Appropriations measure, which the House approved last week. Over 600 amendments were filed to the bill -- a record according to the Rules Committee -- and more than 550 of those came from Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., an opponent of member-directed earmarks.

"I felt I had to do it, because I wanted the opportunity to offer the amendments I wanted to offer and I knew they would only give me a few," Flake said.

On the Defense bill, the chamber voted on eight Flake amendments, seven individual ones and one en bloc amendment. All of them failed.

Billy House contributed to this report.