Stopgap Spending on Tap Before Congress Breaks

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are expected to take up a stopgap spending measure to continue funding federal agencies after Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, before they break to campaign for the November elections.

The Senate is expected to take the lead on the measure, even though the House traditionally initiates spending and budget bills. The shift is due to the fact that the House has begun waiting for the Senate to pass legislation before taking it up, after spending several months approving bills only to see them languish in the upper chamber.

Congress increasingly has had to turn to so-called continuing resolutions to temporarily keep funding the government at current levels after failing to approve appropriations legislation before the end of the fiscal year. The lawmakers have not yet approved any of the 12 appropriations bills needed to fund the federal government for fiscal 2011, which begins Oct. 1.

The bills include appropriations for the Treasury Department, the Transportation Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The CR would allow these and other agencies to continue functioning until the appropriations bills are passed and signed into law.

“We have to pass it,” one House Democratic staffer said about the CR.

The resolution may be one of the final actions Congress takes before breaking for what is expected to be a closely watched election season. Republicans are hoping to regain a majority in the House and have vowed to try to at least partially undo financial regulatory reform, health care and other new laws enacted by the Democratic-controlled Congress this year.

Little legislative action has occurred since Congress came back in session earlier this month from its summer recess and the Jewish holidays. The Senate quickly passed a small business bill, but for other high profile items, there has been mostly debate and little action. That includes legislation that would extend several expiring or expired tax provisions.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced “extenders” legislation last week similar to a bill introduced earlier this year by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich. Both would ­extend BABs, but for different lengths of time and neither is expected to be taken up until after the elections in a lame duck session. Lawmakers are still arguing about whether or how much to extend the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year.

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