A side agreement among congressional leaders to allocate some of the new nondefense funding to opioid abuse prevention, infrastructure and several other priorities is complicating the plan to write a fiscal 2018 omnibus.
Even if that weren’t the case, appropriators say they don’t like being micromanaged.
“We’ve turned it into a Rubik’s Cube that I think is going to be difficult to manage,” Rep. Tom Cole said, although he added, “We’ll get it done.”
The Oklahoma Republican said the agreement makes it more difficult to divide the new nondefense funding among subcommittee spending bills because decisions have to be made about how to spend the money for each priority. Read more