Senate Majority Leader Reid has announced his intention to bring at least three spending bills to the floor this month.  Specifically, he is hoping to move the Agriculture, Transportation-HUD, and Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bills.  All three of these measures were approved with GOP support by the Senate Appropriations Committee last month. Of the three, only Agriculture has been passed by the House.  Transportation-HUD has not been marked up in the House Appropriations Committee and the Commerce-Justice-Science measure has been ready for full floor consideration since July, but hasn’t budged.

My personal take on these somewhat uneventful updates is that while there is a general consensus that both chambers would like to have their spending bills in order prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, there remain some very serious obstacles to getting this done in an efficient manner.  Congress is not oblivious to the fact that these series of short-term spending bills are having an effect on the perception of the general public.  They understand that it is now affecting not only them, but their constituency’s ability to get the job done.  Adding in the discontent relative to job status and the general track record of the economy over the past few months – and many members are eager to show that they can avoid the continuous threat of a government shutdown.  Too many are reliant on their decisions to right the political ship prior to November.  While this is all well and good from a political standpoint, there are numerous issues to contend with in any single one of these appropriations measures.  First, any gamesmanship to avoid the agreement on the debt-limit agreement without providing the appropriate offsets will cause chaos in moving the stand-alone measures quickly. Adding to the difficulty is that many of these measures provide the perfect venue for debating larger policies.  For instance, the Labor-HHS-Education measure (S 1599) includes the opportunity for both parties to debate foreign aid, the labor laws, and the health care overhaul – any one of which could take years.  Much of the spending bills ability to move will come from the party collaboration, bipartisan agreements and settling the terms for rules governing debate prior to their consideration.  While some members seem optimistic and the elements for movement seem to be aligning, the divisive policy measures included in this set of appropriations measures is somewhat troublesome given that last week the threat of shutdown lingered over the relatively innocuous issue of emergency disaster relief funding.  We all want that.  How many of us are in total agreement on health care reform?  Environmental regulation? Labor governance and oversight?  Yikes.