House may scrap even the finished bills on spending

Republicans’ determination to use any means available to force votes on ANWR and new offshore drilling has left the fate of the already marked-up 2009 spending bills in the air.

Democratic House aides acknowledged they are in a tough spot at the hands of a Republican Conference that continues to push energy issues, leaving Democrats to use their own procedural tactics — namely, the suspension calendar — to avoid votes on the matter.

{mosads}And any hope that may have existed for completion of even a few spending bills is diminishing by the day, largely over concerns that having open rules on appropriations bills would invariably lead to floor votes on the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the lifting of the moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.

As was the case last week, House Democrats announced a floor schedule for this week that was largely devoid of any of their energy initiatives. Any votes on energy bills will be under a suspension of the rules — where they will not be subject to Republican alternatives — Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters late last week.

And while Pelosi drew a firm line in the sand over any and all drilling beyond the 88 million acres already leased and approved for exploration, there are Democrats in the House who are worried that the votes are not yet there to beat back GOP attempts to open even more land, including in ANWR and off the coasts.

Democrats have already pushed back non-suspension votes on their initiatives to force oil companies to “use or lose” the leases they currently have and to curtail excessive market speculation to later this week, at the earliest. Now, a combination of frustration with Republican obstructionism and an unsettled uncertainty over any drilling vote may have torpedoed the appropriations process, too.

House appropriators have finished work on five of the 13 annual spending bills — Commerce, Justice and Science; Energy and Water; Financial Services; Homeland Security; and Military Construction. But between persistent White House veto threats, a Senate unlikely to move its own bills out of the upper chamber and Republican attempts to force drilling votes on any and all of the measures brought to the floor, the incentive to do any more spending work is waning, aides said.

“If those five bills come to the floor, you’d see Republicans force votes on ANWR and OCS [the Outer Continental Shelf], without a doubt,” said a senior Democratic aide. “So do we really want to chance it and bring things like appropriations to the floor, knowing that Republicans want to push this as far as they can?”

House Democratic leaders said no decisions have been made on how to proceed with the five completed spending bills.

And beyond subcommittee markups scheduled this week for the Defense and State and Foreign Operations bills, the committee seems to be shut down, thanks to — according to Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) — Republicans attempts to substitute the Interior bill for the Labor-Health and Human Services bill during last week’s markup of the latter.

Republicans defended ranking member Jerry Lewis’s (R-Calif.) move to force a vote on repealing the OCS drilling ban through offering the Interior spending bill as an amendment to Labor-HHS, while Obey and Democrats quickly denounced it as an affront to decades of precedent and “regular order.”

“I have never seen, in the 23 years that I served on the Appropriations Committee, one of the appropriations bills substituted for another one of the appropriations bills in the appropriations process. So a lot of unusual things are happening, unfortunately,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Thursday.

“But,” Hoyer continued, “I have not concluded that we’re not going to consider any appropriations bills on the floor.”

Obey’s office on Monday said the chairman was still discussing with Pelosi how to proceed.

Democratic aides said it is all but certain that Congress will pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded until the next president takes office, pointing to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) statements that a continuing resolution is becoming the most likely option.

A continuing resolution of the current year’s funding levels would not only extend the moratorium on drilling in the OCS into the next Congress, but it would also likely prevent open debate on any number of issues, as historically such funding resolutions are brought up under closed rules.

Republicans said that if the majority rolls over on appropriations, it will only confirm their intention to run out the clock on this Congress.

“It is absolutely ridiculous that House Democrats seem intent on halting the entire appropriations process because they are afraid to take votes on increasing the supply of American energy to bring down gas prices,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Democrats accused Republicans of muddying the legislative waters, and stressed that no final decisions have been reached.

“We’re looking to find a way forward here,” a majority leadership aide said. “And we will continue to look to the chairman on how best to resolve this impasse caused by these Republican stunts.”