The likely delays highlighted how pre-election politics has slowed work on two issues that have at one time or another been characterized as urgent.
House and Senate bargainers reported tentatively agreeing to a price tag for the counter-terror package, which others said was roughly $30.4 billion. The negotiators favored including $205 million to help Amtrak, the national passenger railroad, avoid shutting down, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., and his Senate counterpart, Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said in interviews.
But both men and others said it was unlikely final details could be resolved in time for congressional passage by Friday, when the recess begins. The bill is for the remaining three months of this federal fiscal year.
"I don't see how it can" be finished in time, Young told reporters.
The anti-terror bill's prospects were clouded by a White House veto threat if the measure exceeds the roughly $29 billion in the House version of the bill. President Bush proposed $27.1 billion in March and requested fast congressional action.
Also tied in was a standoff over raising the $5.95 trillion federal borrowing cap.
A day after Bush implored legislators to increase the debt ceiling, top House Republicans said they still lacked the votes to pass it. The Democratic-controlled Senate has already approved a $450 billion increase, which Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has said is needed by Friday.
To circumvent their vote problem, House GOP leaders want to insert a debt-limit increase into the widely supported anti-terrorism legislation.
"There's no Plan B," House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said in an interview.
Most House Democrats say they won't support a debt-limit increase because they don't want to help Republicans solve a problem caused by last year's GOP-written tax cut.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has repeatedly said he wants to force the House to vote on the debt limit issue separately.
But Byrd said Wednesday that if House-Senate bargainers agree on an anti-terror compromise -- and include a top-line figure for spending legislation for next year -- he would favor letting Republicans include language raising the debt limit.
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