Washington – Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring-cleaning job on Democrats moving in. GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half-trillion-dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills.
There’s also no guarantee that Republicans will pass a multibillion-dollar measure to prevent a cut in fees to doctors treating Medicare patients.
The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.
The decision to drop so much unfinished work demonstrates division within Republican ranks and the difficulty in resolving so many knotty questions in so short a time. GOP leaders promised party members that the December lame-duck session would last no more than two weeks, until Dec. 16 at the latest.
Now, with the agenda shrinking, a session that will be the last for 45 retiring or defeated House members and senators should be wrapped up by Dec. 8.
That could work against efforts to forestall a cut in physicians’ Medicare payments.
Under a formula dating to 1997, payments to doctors for office visits will drop an average 5 percent Jan. 1 unless Congress steps in. Keeping them the same would be expensive, about $10.8 billion, and chances are mixed at best for the doctors’ lobby.
Driving the decision to quit and go home is a determined effort by a group of conservative Republicans to prevent putting a GOP stamp on spending bills covering 13 Cabinet departments and loaded with thousands of projects critics deride as “pork.”
Last week, conservatives seized the upper hand by employing delaying tactics to drag the budget process to a halt in the Senate.
For its part, the White House sided with GOP traditionalists such as Appropriations Committee chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who has been pushing to finish the budget while Republicans still hold power.
“We think it’s the best thing for fiscal discipline,” White House budget director Rob Portman told reporters last week.
It will be no small test of the incoming Democratic majority, which has yet to develop a plan to cope with the more than $460 billion in unfinished budget business.
The Democrats’ problem is made even more complicated because President Bush will send Congress a bill early next year that could exceed $130 billion for continuing the war in Iraq, according to Capitol Hill aides.
