Democrats are drafting an omnibus appropriations bill to “split the difference” between the spending plans offered by the White House and Congress in an attempt to resolve the increasingly contentious budget standoff on Capitol Hill, Senate leaders said Thursday.

The omnibus bill will be silent on Iraq war funding. Instead, Senate Democrats and Republicans are headed for a confrontation over a separate $50 billion war spending bill that will likely be rejected on Friday.

After struggling for months, Democrats say they are close to finalizing their strategy to send 11 of 12 remaining annual appropriations bills in one omnibus package to President Bush’s desk. Their strategy has been complicated by Bush’s threats to veto most of the spending bills because they exceed his request.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters that the omnibus would halve the $22 billion extra that Democrats have been trying to add to Bush’s fiscal 2008 budget for domestic discretionary programs.

“We’re in the process of letting him know that we’re going to send him another piece of legislation, and this one likely will be to split the difference,” Reid said. “And that has some tremendously difficult cuts.”

Reid’s comments come as Congress is racing toward recess and trying to pass bills before lawmakers leave Washington for home, or at least ready legislation for final passage when lawmakers return in December.

For instance, Reid signaled that the Senate may try to pass a patch of the Alternative Minimum Tax before Congress leaves and will attempt to put together a bicameral energy bill with a tax incentive package. The senator also said a bill to impose new oversight of Bush’s domestic surveillance program will head to the floor in December.

But the fight over funding domestic programs and the Iraq war is one of the thorniest issues left to resolve. Neither side wants to replicate the Clinton-era government shutdown that resulted from the standoff between the White House and the GOP-led Congress, but neither side is bending.

“It won’t be on our watch,” Durbin said of a shutdown. But he added: “If Republicans decide to force their hand on this, I can’t tell you what the outcome will be.”

The White House on Thursday slammed the Democrats’ plans, signaling that it will not accept an omnibus bill $11 billion above Bush’s request.

“The president has been clear that Congress should adhere to the budgetary process and pass individual funding bills at reasonable and responsible spending levels,” said Sean Kevelighan, a spokesman for the White House budget office. “Perhaps Democratic leadership in Congress, [which] has made promise after promise to complete their work, should concern itself less with capturing political news cycles and more on its fundamental responsibility to fund the federal government.”

Similarly, Senate Republicans signaled that the omnibus bill probably would not resolve the conflict.

“I think he’s quite serious about his number,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said of the president.

Senate Republicans hold a potent weapon to split up an omnibus bill: a rule revised by the new ethics law that allows a senator to try to remove new provisions “airdropped” into a bicameral conference committee.

On Thursday, Republicans and their allies criticized Democrats for not pushing ahead with a “clean” interim Iraq funding bill before the Thanksgiving recess scheduled to begin by day’s end Friday.

“These anti-war forces intend to hold hostage the funds that our troops need,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee and a strong supporter of Bush’s war policy.

Democrats pushed back, and said they would not give Bush a war-funding bill without conditions calling for a change of policy in Iraq.

“The days are over when the money is sent with no questions asked,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference.

The stakes are high. Democrats say that the Pentagon will be forced to fund the war through the $460 billion Pentagon spending bill signed this week if the White House and Republicans do not agree to change war policy.

That has prompted the White House and GOP to say that failing to provide funds will make it increasingly difficult for the Pentagon to plan and conduct the war.

The Democratic bill would provide $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and set a “goal” of withdrawing troops from Iraq by December 2008. That measure passed the House Thursday night by a 218-213 vote.

“We’ll either do it easily or the hard way,” Reid said.

McConnell filed cloture Thursday on a Republican-sponsored $70 billion troop funding bill that does not include a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

The prospects for the 60 votes needed to move to both the GOP and Democratic bills on Friday are murky at best. Reid echoed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in saying that the votes on spending bills will be the last of the year.