Senate appropriators to begin marking up spending bills

“The Appropriations Committee has 12 bills to complete before the end of the fiscal year in September, and we must get started. As I told my colleagues back in March, if we fail to move individual appropriations bills through Congress, we will again be faced with the prospect of passing a CR or an Omnibus in order to prevent a government shutdown,” Inouye said.

“I believe that the ongoing budget negotiations will eventually produce a bipartisan agreement on discretionary spending levels. In the meanwhile, as these vital discussions move forward, the committee, in keeping with its long tradition of bipartisanship, is working to find common ground and move forward with the Fiscal Year 2012 appropriations process,” he added.

{mosads}He said the committee hopes to have agreement on “several bills.” Likely candidates are homeland security and defense.

“We would all prefer to have a bipartisan Budget Resolution pass the Senate, but that has not happened thus far and so the committee will proceed to the extent that we can without one,” Inouye added. 

The level of spending for the bill was not released Monday. No other markups are currently scheduled.

Until last week, Inouye was a part of deficit-reduction talks led by Vice President Biden. Those came screeching to a halt on Thursday when Republicans walked out due to their opposition to considering any tax increases to reduce the deficit.