Here’s one possible scenario: The Omnibus spending bill appears tomorrow, runs through a revolving door at the Rules committee, and makes a late night appearance on the House floor without earmarks disclosed.

Wait a minute, I thought bills (and rules) were required to be available to 48 hours prior to voting. Well, the title the rules committee gave the report accompanying the rule says it all (in the URL below note: “110 sameday omnibus.pdf”).

Click Here to read the rule (http://www.rules.house.gov/110/rept/110_sameday_omnibus.pdf)

But that’s not all.

The rule includes a clause which states:
The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations may insert in the Congressional Record at any time during the remainder of the first session of the 110th Congress such material as he may deem explanatory of appropriations measures for the fiscal year 2008.

In other words, House leadership is saying we’ll catch you later on the earmark disclosure. The table is set for Congress to unveil a spending bill with more than $500 billion in spending, pass it a few hours later, and not tell us anything for days or weeks about the thousands of earmarks worth billions of dollars that are stashed in the bill. They may disclose the thousands of earmarks when the bill drops, but they’ve given themselves a juicy escape clause.

The details. Instead of conferencing the appropriations bills, they are bringing up the Senate amendment to the State and Foreign Operations spending bill (Senate version of the spending bill) and offering the eleven spending bills as an amendment. One of the impacts of this is that the earmark disclosure rules don’t apply to a Senate bill, and so they are not required to disclose all the earmarks.  And by setting it up so that they can do same day consideration, there is no guarantee that we will even be able pull an all-nighter to get through thousands of pages and half a trillion dollars. (On the no all-nighter, maybe we should be thanking them?). The House is not scheduled to have any votes until 6:30 PM tomorrow, so the Omnibus won’t be on the floor until late that night.

And OMB Director promised a veto based on how the bill has been described in press reports. It’s going to be an interesting week.  We of course will let you know what we know, when we know it.

For more information, please contact Steve Ellis, 202-546-8500 ext. 126, or by email.