Senate Appropriations Ranking Member Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) said this week that the she expected the appropriations subcommittees to officially receive their FY17 302(b) allocations on April 14. That is also when the first FY17 spending bill could be marked up in a Senate subcommittee. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) hinted that his appropriations bill could be up for consideration next week, and could be on the floor as soon as April 18. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the Senate would move forward on the FY17 spending bills by adhering to the $1.07T discretionary spending limit agreed to in last year’s bipartisan budget deal. Subcommittee chairmen including Military Construction-Veterans Affairs chairman Mark Kirk (R-IL), have indicated that they have received “working targets” but have declined to disclose the dollar figures. And while the Senate’s preferred path forward is one in which the House passes the spending bills and then they act on them, they are considering using four FY16 House-passed measures to get around the provision in the Constitution requiring the House to go first. These four measures would allow the Senate to bring their FY17 spending bills to the floor before the House does.
On the House side, the House Rules Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing next Thursday to consider changes to the appropriations process that could help them find a compromise and persuade fiscal conservatives to support a higher level of discretionary spending. The changes to Rule XXI could include a measure allowing appropriators to cut mandatory spending as conservatives are looking for a way to guarantee mandatory spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to higher discretionary spending.