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Top appropriators moving forward on 2012 spending
The top appropriators in the House and Senate conferred Tuesday morning and are moving closer to agreeing on a framework for wrapping up the 2012 spending bills.
The phone call between House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) came on a day when the House approved a six-week funding measuring giving Congress until Nov. 18 to dispose of 12 appropriations bills or again risk a government shutdown.
The summer debt ceiling deal set an overall discretionary spending level of $1.043 trillion for 2012. Rogers said that the chairmen are moving closer to agreeing on a way to divide that pie into 12 pieces.
Only once this division is decided, can the GOP and Democrats discuss how to move the 12 different bills and how to deal with dozens of policy riders in each including blockbuster items like the defunding of health reform and financial reform.
To insiders the divisions are known as “302B allocations” after the provision in the budget law where they are called for.
“Before we do anything we have got to settle that. We have to all be talking on the same level,” Rogers said.
He said the House has proposed allocations based on $1.043 trillion but the Senate still won’t quite agree. Inouye is conferring with his members, Rogers said.
Once the spending levels are set, then both sides will be able to discuss whether to move the 12 bills as one huge omnibus bill or to break up the bills into several “mini-buses,” Rogers said.
No decision has been made on that approach yet. In the meantime, subcommittee chairmen from each body are setting up meetings to start negotiating policy riders and other specific spending differences, a House GOP aide said.
Each time an appropriations bill comes up, GOP leadership will have to deal with its fractured caucus. That would make an omnibus more palatable.
Fifty-three Republicans voted against the six-week measure mostly because they want a lower overall spending level than agreed to in the debt ceiling deal.
Conferencing and voting on 12 separate bills raises the specter of ugly fights each time in the caucus.
On the other hand, the GOP has vowed to return to “regular order” and avoid omnibuses, and the GOP worked hard to ridicule Democrats last December for attempting to ram an omnibus through Congress in the lame duck session.
Aides said that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) strongly prefers regular order and that Senate GOP will not accept an omnibus approach. “Give the problems with that, I do not think the caucus can support an omnibus,” one leadership aide said.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) suggested moving three appropriations bills before Oct. 24 onto the floor, likely as a “minibus” package to reduce the floor time required. Reid favors moving the “easier” agriculture, transportation and commerce bills, an aide siad.
Senate Appropriations has marked up every bill except the Interior, Environment bill.
The Senate has been unable to produce an Interior bill and House Appropriations cardinal Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said he believes it is because Democrats are afraid their own members will support riders limiting the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“They are holding it back, I believe, because, there are some provisions in there that they would lose,” Simpson said. “Greenhouse gas is one of them.”
He said another provision has to do whether limiting the ability of the EPA to regulate small streams.
“Even if they did a markup and it had those things in it, it makes it pretty easy to conference. You can say, 'wait a minute, guys, your own members supported this,' ” he said.
Simpson is looking to meet his Senate counterpart Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to negotiate the bill soon.
Simpson said that the 53 defections on the CR “raise the question” about how much the GOP needs to do to win Democrat support on the final 2012 spending bills.
With die-hard conservatives unwilling to vote for any spending bills based on the debt ceiling deal, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is pressing for advantage and proclaiming that the GOP has a weakened hand.
Fiscal conservatives are sticking to their guns however.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said that he is fighting a long struggle and denied his vote against the six-week bill backed by leadership was a fruitless act.
“We are trying to pull the caucus however we can into a more fiscally conservative direction. That is what some of us have been trying to do for a long time,” he said.
He noted that his lonely quest against earmarks took years, but resulted in a two-year ban earlier this year. He said that as elections come closer, he hopes more members come into the fiscally conservative camp.
Flake confirmed that he has held up any markup in the House of the Labor appropriations bill because he has been pushing for much lower spending in accord with the House-passed budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) said he was voting against the six week bill because he has always been a “Ryan budget” man.
Fiscal conservative Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on the other hand said voting against the bill after having supported the debt ceiling deal would be hypocritical.
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