Senate leaders gave up their hope of passing a government budget bill Thursday night, pledging to find a way to work through a slew of amendments and pass the measure next Monday night.
Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said committee staff will work through the weekend to reduce the number of proposed amendments to the “continuing resolution” (CR), which would fund the government after March 27 and includes a full-blown defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2013. As of Thursday night 99 amendments were pending, she said.
“I would hope on Monday senators come ready to really wrap it up, because we would have liked to have sent our bill to the House at noon today,” Mikulski said on the Senate floor Thursday night.
She acknowledged senators have “a lot of pent-up desire to participate in policymaking,” by amending the CR.
“Let’s keep it to not what we would like to do,” she said. “Let’s keep it to what we must do.” She said senators should save “like-to-do” amendments for Senate debate on a 10-year budget resolution and on subsequent bills “where we can really dive deep into the issues, the policies, and the funding.”
The CR would fund the government until the end of FY ’13 near FY ’12 funding levels. It has full defense appropriations bills for the Pentagon and agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and NASA. Having that legislation in place will help the Pentagon better manage the sequestration budget cuts that started March 1. The $500 billion in decade-long cuts are designed to cut defense accounts in an across-the-board manner. The CR, though, shifts around Pentagon funding to better reflect the military’s needs and also allows the Pentagon to seek congressional approval to reprogram funding in its coffers.
The CR has the same defense appropriations bill that’s in the version of the legislation the House passed last week.
The only difference is the House version includes a 0.109 percent reduction to “security” funding, while the Senate version set that reduction at 0.092 percent, according to SAC staff. Thus, the Senate bill approved by the SAC includes a $517.7 billion base defense budget, while the House version calls for $517.6 billion.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) expressed concerns last week about the Senate adding provisions to the CR not in the House-passed version. But, he told reporters Thursday: “I’ll wait and see what the Senate produces once it comes off the floor. So far, so good.”
The White House has indicated President Barack Obama will sign a final House-Senate compromise CR into law.