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McConnell ‘optimistic’ about appropriations season |
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By Elana Schor
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Posted: 04/27/07 01:31 PM [ET] |
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Friday that he believes the divisive and prolonged battle over the war supplemental will not spill over into this year’s appropriations process.
“I’m fairly optimistic that we’ll get back to doing regular appropriations bills,” McConnell told reporters, adding that he and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have affirmed their commitment to tackling each of the 12 appropriations bills individually.
Appropriations for fiscal year 2007, which ends in September, devolved amid partisan battles at the end of the 109th Congress, when Republican leaders acceded to conference conservatives who preferred a continuing resolution, free of earmarks, to approving the remaining appropriations bills through regular order.
“Both sides don’t have a perfect track record” on appropriations, McConnell observed, comparing the unfinished appropriations cycle of this year to the 2002 appropriations year, when Republicans took back the Senate with unfinished government-funding work to do.
Meanwhile, McConnell said preliminary talks already have begun on the second edition of the $124 billion war supplemental. The bill that Congress passed this week is virtually certain to receive a presidential veto next week.
Benchmarks for progress by the Iraqi government are likely to appear in the post-veto supplemental, and McConnell pointed negotiators to a benchmarks plan crafted by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) but never voted on.
“We all know there are certain things they haven’t done that need to be done,” McConnell said of Iraqi leaders’ progress.
“We’re all putting pressure on them ... When someone who has been pretty supportive of the president says what you’ve heard me say” about the chaos in Iraq, McConnell added, the message is that even supporters are losing patience with Baghdad’s lack of movement towards political reconciliation.
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