Appropriators continue to work on FY2014 spending bills with the hopes of advancing an omnibus bill that incorporates funding for the 12 annual spending bills. If an agreement cannot be reached on one or more of the 12 measures, appropriators will instead advance a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the affected agencies.
It is still not clear how the new $1.012 trillion dollar budget will be divided among the 12 spending measures. These allocations have been assigned to each subcommittee but so far none have been made public and probably won’t be until the draft omnibus is released next week sometime. This leaves little time for lawmakers to approve a spending package as the current CR expires on January 15th. House and Senate procedures mean even earlier deadlines as they are required to give members time to review the legislation before they vote.