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Congressional Democrats appear likely to sidestep a budget fight with President Bush and instead wait until next year before passing the 12 annual spending bills.
Leaders for both parties have not officially given up and may find enough good will to pass the Pentagon spending bill. But Democrats have signaled in recent weeks that they have a better chance of funding their spending priorities for the coming year after Bush leaves office.
The impasse appears to come down to $21 billion that Democrats want to add on top of Bush’s top-line request of $991 billion. The White House has promised to veto any bills over Bush’s ceiling — a threat the president carried through on last year that forced Democrats to capitulate in order to avoid a government shutdown.
This time around, Democrats say they have the upper hand. Come January, they can negotiate with a new president — perhaps Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Even if they are talking with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), they are likely to have a wider margin in the majority.
“I don’t think he should be waiting in bated breath to get these bills anyway because he’s unwilling to work with us,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last month of Bush. “The point is we’re going to have a lot of trouble doing our appropriations bills this year because of the inability of the White House to compromise on anything.”
The White House says Congress is holding critical funding hostage by taking such an approach.
Jim Nussle, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the White House is willing to negotiate with Democrats, pointing to the emergency Iraq funding bill signed into law this week by Bush, who agreed to Democrats’ demands to include a new GI Bill and an unemployment-insurance extension.
“When Congress does not even do their work, they don’t even have a position to negotiate from,” Nussle said. He added that agencies have “assumed a breakdown” in their planning for the coming years.
Postponing action on more than $1 trillion in government programs could force Congress to extend current funding levels into next year and affect a wide array of federal programs desperate for an immediate boost.
For instance, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are considering the unprecedented move of forgoing collecting birth-certificate data that are central to analyzing the health of the nation, according to federal officials and internal e-mails.
None of the 12 appropriations bills has passed either chamber thus far, and with little more than 30 legislative days left until the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, a speedy resolution seems unlikely.
When Congress returns from its Independence Day holiday next week, lawmakers have just four weeks until the August recess to complete complex bills on housing, electronic surveillance and Medicare and will debate election-year bills to stem gas prices and possibly to prop up the flagging economy.
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