Congress returned from its August recess with an appropriations-heavy agenda. After months of squabbling, the entire remaining legislative agenda for the 106th Congress is to be pressed into roughly 20 legislative days. As has seemingly always been the case in election years, the air in Washington is filled with rumors as to why appropriations conferences will or will not go forward, and whether or not various appropriations bills will be left incomplete to be gathered into a huge omnibus appropriations bill at the end of the year. This year the House GOP leaders as an election strategy are said to be interested in confrontations with the White House, whereas their Senate counterparts are said to be eager to cut deals and avoid a showdown. Staff members of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Interior and Related Agencies have been meeting to discuss differences in the two bills.
Staff advise that they are currently moving along through the easier areas of difference.
The House, despite vigorous efforts of the friends of the endowments, provides flat funding for each agency in its version of H.R. 4578. Mr. Gorton has been very clear in remarks on the Senate floor that he will not recede to the House leaders. The question of the day is how, in the pressure cooker atmosphere of a presidential election, the House leaders' opposition will play out for NEH and IMLS, and for NEA itself.