WASHINGTON-Congress passed a one-week funding extension late last week that averts a third shutdown of the Federal Communications Commission, giving Republicans and Democrats a chance this week to consider a broader spending measure to keep government agencies without appropriations operating for the final six months of the fiscal year.
Much of the federal government, including the FCC, was set to shut down at midnight last Friday had not lawmakers passed the eighth continuing resolution since Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year began. The new stop-gap measure, which President Clinton was expected to sign, keeps agencies that lack full appropriations running through March 22.
The omnibus spending measure passed by the House sets the FCC budget at $175.7 million-the level agreed to in the Commerce appropriations bill that Clinton vetoed in December-for the rest of the fiscal year.
The Senate version being debated gives the commission $20 million more, or $195.7 million.
A House-Senate conference is expected to begin work on the omnibus spending resolution tomorrow night, setting the stage for possibly another partial government shutdown or another short-term stopgap spending bill by week’s end if a compromise is not reached.
Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), key members of the Commerce appropriations subcommittee, are given credit for getting the extra money that FCC Chairman Reed Hundt says is needed to implement the telecommunications reform bill and to move the agency’s headquarters across town to The Portals.
But there is no guarantee an omnibus spending bill will make it through Congress this week or ever. Top GOP leaders and the White House are at loggerheads over Clinton’s insistence on funding for various education, environment and other social initiatives.
“Republicans have found it singularly impossible to get the administration to come to grips with festering budget issues,” said Bob Livingston (R-La.), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
The FCC, which has been without an annual budget since the new fiscal year began, has been caught up in a large, nasty budget battle between the GOP-led Congress and the Clinton Administration that is expected to continue the rest of this year.
Yet, the agency got the Office of Management and Budget to agree during the last government shutdown to let personal communications services and specialized mobile radio auctions continue.
Five of the 13 appropriations bills have not been enacted and the seven-year balanced budget bill championed by GOP leaders is dead.
In other action last week, the House passed, 229 to 191, an anti-crime and terrorism bill without funding to implement the digital wiretap bill.
