The 93 House and Senate conferees for the surface transportation bill have scheduled their first public meeting to begin the process of merging the two versions of the bill on June 9. Now that Congress has returned, lawmakers have 19 legislative days to work on reconciling the bills. The current short-term extension--the seventh since the law expired Sept. 30, 2003--will expire June 30.

Staff for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have already held meetings and are expected to give lawmakers a list of lower-level policy issues to approve at the June 9 meeting. Staffers will soon reach a point where they can no longer negotiate until the biggest issue is taken care of - the total cost of the bill. At this point it is unclear as to how the debate over the differing costs of will shake out. The House passed a six-year bill at just under $284 billion. The Senate, on the other hand, passed a bill that climbs to about $295 billion - too high for President Bush who has vowed to veto the bill if it comes to his desk at that level.

Congress returns to town this week after a week-long recess with the possibility of action on some major domestic issues during the next four weeks including possible completion of the highway reauthorization bill and further action on a national energy policy.

Kicking off the action, the Senate will finally begin work on appropriations this week starting with the Interior spending bill slated for subcommittee action tomorrow and a full committee markup on June 9. Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) will also move the process along on June 9 by unveiling his allocation of the $843 billion in discretionary spending among the 12 subcommittees.

Continuing to move faster than its counterpart, the House has scheduled the agriculture spending bill for floor time this week and will also markup both the Defense, Science-State-Justice-Commerce and Labor-HHS-Education bills.

President Bush nominated House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-California) to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission following the resignation of the current chairman. Cox's new position will leave an open chairmanship when he departs next month. Whoever fills the position will be responsible for continuing to shape the newly permanent committee. Cox pushed hard last year to make the select committee permanent in the face of opposition by several other chairmen such as House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), House Commerce and Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), and House T & I Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska).

Assuming Cox is approved by the Senate, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) will make a recommendation for chairman to the House Steering Committee. Typically, the choice to fill the chairmanship would be made from among the committee members with the most seniority. However, under House GOP caucus rules seniority is not the controlling factor.

Young is the "ranking Republican" on the panel and he would have to give up his chairmanship of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which expires at the end of the congress. Young narrowly missed being named vice chairman of the committee in February, but was a prominent critic of the effort to create a new homeland security panel.

That leaves third-ranking Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), fourth-ranking Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania), who is vice chairman of the homeland security committee, and fifth-ranking Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut) who has already pulled himself out of the running.

Hastert could also recommend someone who does not currently sit on the Homeland Security Committee.

The House named 63 conferees to the surface transportation reauthorization May 26 after defeating a motion that would have required them to support an additional $11 billion in funding than passed by the House.

The House voted 189 to 223 to kill the motion that would have directed House conferees to insist on the $283.9 billion in the House bill (H.R. 3) plus additional funds needed to increase the guaranteed rate of return for all states to at least 92 percent.

The Senate also named conferees yesterday - appointing 16 Republican conferees and 14 Democratic conferees - after passing the seventh short-term extension (H.R. 2566) of highway, transit, and highway safety programs. President Bush is expected to sign the measure before the May 31 expiration of the current stopgap measure.

Senate rules provide that the signature of each conferee is valid for decisions relating to the entire bill. The entire membership of the Environment and Public Works Committee was named, plus certain representatives from the Banking, Commerce, Finance and Budget Committees. The Senate conferees are Senators Inhofe, Warner, Bond, Voinovich, Chafee, Murkowski, Thune, DeMint, Isakson, Vitter, Grassley, Hatch, Shelby, Allard, Stevens, Lott, Jeffords, Baucus, Lieberman, Boxer, Carper, Clinton, Lautenberg, Obama, Conrad, Inouye, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Reed, and Johnson.

Over in the House, there are 37 Republicans and 25 Democrats representing the House Transportation and Infrastructure, Budget, Education and the Workforce, Energy and Commerce, Government Reform, Homeland Security, Judiciary, Resources, Rules, Science, and Ways and Means committees. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was also named a roving conferee who can sit in on all negotiations.

Conferees representing the transportation panel are: Young, Oberstar, and Reps. Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin), Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York), Howard Coble (R-North Carolina), John J. Duncan (R-Tennessee.), John L. Mica (R-Florida), Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan), Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama), Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), Richard Baker (R-Louisiana.), Gary Miller (R-California), Robin Hayes (R-North Carolina), Robert Simmons (R-Connecticut), Henry Brown (R-South Caroline), Sam Graves (R-Missouri), Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), Peter A. DeFazio (D-Oregon), Jerry Costello (D-Illinois), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Jerry Nadler (D-New York), Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), Corrine Brown (D-Florida), Bob Filner (D-California), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Texas), Gene Taylor (D-Mississippi), Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), and Ellen Tauscher (D-California).

Conferees representing the House Budget Committee are Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), ranking member John Spratt (D-South Carolina), and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Florida).

Conferees representing the House Ways and Means Committee are Chairman Bill Thomas (R-California), ranking member Charles Rangel (D-New York), and Rep. Jim McCrery (R-Louisiana.).

Conferees representing the House Science Committee are ranking member Bart Gordon (D-Tennessee.), and Reps. Vernon Ehlers (R-Michigan) and Dave Reichert (R-Washington).

Conferees representing the House Rules Committee are Chairman David Dreier (R-California), and Reps. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) and Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts).

Conferees representing the House Resources Committee are Chairman Richard Pombo (R-California), and Reps. Greg Waldon (R-Oregon) and Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin).

Conferees representing the House Judiciary Committee are Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), ranking member John Conyers (D-Michigan), and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas).

Conferees representing the House Government Reform Committee are Chairman Tom Davis (R-Virginia), ranking member Henry Waxman (D-California), and Todd Platts (R-Pennsylvania).

Conferees representing the House Energy and Commerce Committee are Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking member John Dingell (D-Michigan), and Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Mississippi).

Conferees representing the House Education and the Workforce Committee are Reps. John Kline (R-Minnesota), Ric Keller (R-Florida) and John Barrow (D-Georgia).

Conferees representing the Homeland Security Committee are Chairman Christopher Cox (California), ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), and Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California).

Members will return to town the week of June 6th when Congress returns from a week-long break.

Congress is expected to pass a month-long extension of current surface transportation programs before the Memorial Day break begins at the end of this week. That gives lawmakers one more month to complete the conference committee on the long-term reauthorization bill by the July 4th recess. The Republican leaders of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees met yesterday, taking the first step toward reaching a compromise on funding for a multiyear transportation reauthorization bill (H.R. 3). The two are trying to compare the funding provisions in the House $283.9 billion highway, transit, and highway safety reauthorization, with those in the Senate $295 billion measure. The administration has made it clear that it will not support any measure higher than the House level.

While conferees still have not been named, the month-long extension will be voted on in the House on May 26 and possibly in the Senate on the same day.

The House passed the $29.75 billion fiscal year 2006 Energy and Water appropriations bill yesterday with a vote of 416-13. One provision in the bill may mean that future Army Corps of Engineers projects will proceed at a slower pace by limiting the agency’s spending flexibility by exerting tighter control over how the corps transfers money from one project to another and allocates federal dollars for multi-year contracts..

Under current practice for example, the corps may issue a $300 million contract with congressional appropriations of $50 million a year until the project is done. A contractor could proceed with the project that year and use its own money once the $50 million had been spent, with the expectation of being reimbursed. The corps has traditionally done this by shifting money from one project to another. The language approved yesterday could prevent work from progressing once a project passes that $50 million mark, stalling projects and resulting in unnecessary and costly project starts and stops, according to critics.

In addition, House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Hobson (R-Ohio) and ranking member Pete Visclosky (D-Indiana) inserted a measure into the bill that would restrict the corp's ability to divert money from one project to another.