Looking beyond next week's election, Congress faces the difficult task of completing action on nine of the thirteen annual appropriation bills. Funding has been approved for Defense, Military Construction, Homeland Security, and the District of Columbia. Remaining federal programs are funded in a continuing resolution that expires November 20.

Congress is expected to return the week of November 15, and its highest priority is to package the remaining nine appropriation bills into an omnibus appropriation. However, that process is already daunting and could grow more complicated by the result of the election.

Before recessing in early October, the Senate added over $8 billion to its version of several appropriation bills. Reconciling such a huge difference in spending with the House will be difficult given the expected strong opposition from conservatives in both houses. The two retiring chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will be motivated to complete the legislation while they still have control of the committees. However a Democratic victory for the White House or control of the Senate might encourage Democrats to seek a delay in the final decisions until January or February.

Some bills have grown so controversial that committee leaders are considering moving a smaller omnibus bill to accommodate the less problematic bills, namely Agriculture; Commerce, Justice, State; Foreign Operations; Interior; and the Legislative Branch appropriations. The controversial bills--Energy and Water Development; Labor, HHS, Education; Transportation and Treasury; and VA, HUD--might be packaged as a separate omnibus appropriation or be considered individually. Such a process would undoubtedly extend the length of Congress's lame duck session.

Contrary to previous years, the Energy and Water Development bill is proving to be perhaps the most controversial. Funding for the proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada has stalled Senate action since June. The issue is so hotly contested in the presidential battleground state that Senate and House leaders are considering a year-long continuing resolution for all programs and projects funded under the legislation. Such an outcome would be a major disappointment for supporters of the numerous Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation projects funded under the legislation.

Progress on the Labor, HHS, Education bill is not only hampered by higher spending proposed by the Senate but also a veto threat over language included in both the House and Senate bills limiting new overtime pay regulations supported by the Bush Administration.

The White House has threatened to veto the Transportation and Treasury Appropriation because of bill language limiting the President's privatization plans and a Senate provision to stop enforcing the travel ban to Cuba. Major spending issues must also be determined because the House zeroed out funding for road and transit programs in a jurisdiction dispute with the authorizing committee, which has failed to reauthorize TEA-21.