Short-term budget bill will be needed to avoid government shutdown, aides say

Congressional aides on Wednesday said it is a virtual certainty that the House and Senate will have to pass a short-term budget resolution next month to avoid a shutdown of the federal government.

Aides said Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to give Democrats and Republicans more time to hammer out their differences on spending. 

The CR that is funding the federal government currently expires March 4, and a new measure could fund the government for another few weeks to a month.

A floor vote on the budget bill to last the remainder of the fiscal year is slated for the week of Feb. 14. The Senate will be out of session the following week, leaving lawmakers one week to process it.

One aide said appropriators assume the House CR will be “dead on arrival” in the Senate. Several aides said there is no way the Senate can handle the House bill — which will cut non-security spending by an estimated $82 billion or more — in a single week.

Senate appropriators are not working on a funding bill now and are just waiting for the House to act, aides said. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) last week told The Hill that he expected a short-term budget bill would be necessary.

Aides said that to meet the demands of the Pentagon, the full-year funding bill the House plans to consider will most likely include a full defense appropriations title ripped from the pages of the Senate omnibus bill that failed last year. The text of the House appropriations bill will be released next week.

The current plan for the spending bill is to use a standalone defense appropriations bill as the vehicle for a full-year budget resolution for the rest of the government, one aide said.

Another aide said the defense bill was the “leading option” for the continuing resolution but cautioned that the decision is not set in stone. 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pleaded with Congress to produce a standalone budget bill so that the Pentagon does not need to operate for a full year at the 2010 funding levels, which were extended by the CR passed at the end of last year. 

“I have a crisis on my doorstep,” Gates said of the Pentagon’s funding.

There will be one key difference with the omnibus, however. The earmarks from that bill will be stripped out and defense funding will be set at about $13 billion less than President Obama had requested for 2011. Currently, the Pentagon is making due with $23 billion less than Obama’s request.

Appropriators expect House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to informally tell them by the end of this week the overall spending ceiling for 2011. Ryan has been empowered under House rules to set 2011 non-security spending levels at 2008 levels or less.

Ryan is to publish his numbers on Tuesday in the Congressional Record.

That day, House appropriators are to meet and decide on spending ceilings for each subcommittee and flesh out the committee bill by Feb. 11.  

The committee bill will be subject to an open amendment process on the House floor. Republican leaders are planning to use the amendment process to gauge the GOP conference’s willingness to back specific cuts.

The process will be a test of the Republican Study Committee’s clout. The bloc of conservative lawmakers is demanding that the House approve spending cuts that total at least $100 billion.

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