Newly appointed Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) said that he would like to return to “regular order” with the FY2019 appropriations bills. Senate appropriators are preparing to mark up their bills in May so that they can have some of them on the Senate floor in June, and then have three or four bills in conference before September. Shelby’s goal is to avoid another end-of-year omnibus, which President Trump has said he wouldn’t accept again.
The mid-term elections and the limited time available on the Senate floor for consideration, however, could lead to bills being packaged into smaller minibuses. Shelby is meeting with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) this week to discuss FY19 subcommittee allocations.
The House will begin marking up their spending bills on April 26 with the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs bill. Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX) said her bill would be marked up in the “middle of June.” Full committee markups in the House will begin May 8. The House hopes to have all of their FY19 spending bills done by mid-June or July. They are considering a strategy of bundling their bills into minibuses to speed their approval. House leadership is looking to the Senate for guidance on what they can get through their chamber, and that will drive in large part the strategy they employ in the House.