With continuing resolution passed, approps work begins

The fiscal year started Monday as it has since 1994: with annual spending bills still unfinished.

{mosads}President Bush last week signed a measure that provides stopgap funding until Nov. 16, thus averting a government shutdown as he knocked Democrats for failing to meet their fiscal obligations. But Republicans weren’t any better about meeting deadlines, and Democrats, in turn, challenged the president to be more open to negotiation instead of insisting his own budget targets be met.

This week, lobbying efforts in the Senate are focused on spending measures that fund the Defense, Commerce and Justice departments.

Lobbyists and congressional aides said each could come to the floor in the coming days, although a single appropriations measure often takes at least a week to resolve, as policy disputes, such as continuing the war in Iraq, and sharpened political divides complicate passage and frustrate appropriators, who often view themselves as above partisanship if not policymaking.

“There are lots more amendments and discussions about spending bills than there used to be,” said one appropriations lobbyist.

 To overcome a threatened veto from Bush on the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) measure, Democrats have a weapon at the ready: rising incidence of violent crime they say supports their raised budget allocation for Justice Department programs that supplement local law enforcement efforts.

In total, the bill is about $4 billion over what the administration requested. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) may also seek to add more to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget line, which if not offset somewhere could further heighten tensions between the White House and Congress.

 Appropriations lobbyists had predicted Bush would take a hard line on spending to motivate a conservative base after a brutal midterm election, And he has threatened to veto 8 of 12 spending measures.

But it’s unclear whether a final deal will be struck or whether the spending bills will attract defections among Republicans, who in general seem supportive of Bush’s current course.

Local law enforcement groups planned to press for the Senate plus-up to the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, which has had strong bipartisan support since it was started in the Clinton administration.

Policing programs would get $2.7 billion in the Senate budget, according to one aide, compared to the president’s $1.1 billion request. These programs received about $1.9 billion in the 2007 budget.

The program is “very popular on the Hill,” said one former appropriations committee aide who is now a lobbyist.
“The House and Senate scramble to pick up extra allocations to make up the difference.”

The administration argues that budget cuts to programs like COPS are more than made up for in extra money in the homeland security spending bill to support local policing efforts.

In years passed, the CJS bill has been a particularly difficult spending measure to get through. Its jurisdiction included the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the bill would attract amendments related to everything from stock options and media ownership.

But the Democrats realigned the appropriators’ responsibilities, giving jurisdiction over SEC and FCC to the Financial Services and General Government subcommittee.

“This could be a less controversial bill, but not less difficult because funding has become tighter,” said the former committee aide.

Pro-gun control advocates suffered a defeat during the committee markup when a provision that would have allowed the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms to share data on guns used in crimes with local law enforcement officials was removed from the CJS bill. A coalition of mayors led by New York’s Michael Bloomberg had pushed for the law change. But in the wake of that defeat, CJS subcommittee chairwoman Mikulski wasn’t expected to offer an amendment on the floor.

 Meanwhile, the House starts its week with a series of suspension votes, including a measure scheduled to be voted on Tuesday that would tie financial aid to Ethiopia with the government’s human rights record.

More attention is likely to be focused on the House Oversight and Government Reform hearing, also on Tuesday, on Blackwater USA.

In preparation, Democratic staff released a critical report of the private security company yesterday that found Blackwater employees had been in nearly 200 incidents of gunfire in Iraq since 2005.

Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince is expected to argue that the security company has only stepped up efforts to protect its workers after being criticized for not doing enough in an incident early in the war in which four Blackwater employees will ambushed and killed in Fallujah.

The security company has paid C&M Capitolink $140,000 so far to lobby Congress, about $20,000 less that it paid the firm in all of 2006, according to Senate lobbying records.