Appropriations update

*Update care of David Culp of FCNL.

The House and Senate appropriations staff are working now on an omnibus appropriations bill, which will cover the remaining 11 appropriation bills. The total price tag for the package will be $10.6 billion over the president's request. The House expects to take up the omnibus first, the week of December 10. The bill will then go to the Senate floor, followed by a brief House-Senate conference. (The two bills may end up different.) Congress is hoping to get the bill to the president before the current Continuing Resolution (CR) expires on Friday, December 14, but that will be difficult.

At this point the White House is not compromising in its insistence that the bill's total not exceed the budget request. It now looks likely that the president will veto the omnibus, and that there are not the votes in the House to override such a veto. Congress' default option will be to pass another CR. That could go until sometime in January or through September 30, 2008.