There was an interesting article on CQPolitics.Com about some of the things that people were talking about adding into a continuing resolution. While a CR should be a fairly clean piece of legislation, there is a lot of unfinished business on the legislative calendar that might get added on. Plus, of course, the usual pork programs used to buy the necessary votes to potentially overturn a possible Bush veto.
According to the article there is even talk of including the complete 2009 appropriations for both Defense and Homeland Security in the CR. The negotiations to get those two sets of legislation complete (there are separate and different House and Senate bills for both of those departments) will certainly go on behind closed doors. If that happens, there is no telling what will come to the floor.
If the Democrats are going to succeed in their plan to adjourn for the year on Friday, they are going to have to give Bush some good reason not to veto the resolution. Even if they have an apparently veto proof margin on the first go round, President can keep things interesting by holding up his veto until Monday or Tuesday. That situation would probably force a clean CR with a mid-November expiration date with a lame duck Congress coming back to town to deal with the budget.
Between the election campaign, the financial system melt-down, and now the broke budget process, this is certainly going to be an interesting month or two.
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