Although five of the 11 appropriations bills remain to be signed into law by President Bush, Congress has completed work on all but two: the Defense and Labor/Health and Human Services bills. While a massive omnibus has been avoided this year, an equally contentious (and still quite large) bill--a so-called "minibus"--could be passed containing those two final bills. With all the items on the schedule for December and likely only three weeks to complete them, Congress still has a lot of work left to do before they are finished for the year. Besides working to finish appropriations after returning from the Thanksgiving recess on Dec. 5, Congress will be busy trying to find consensus on the vastly disparate House and Senate budget reconciliation bills, moving forward with work on the tax cut reconciliation bills, and attempting to pass a border security measure and a pension reform bill. It is almost assured some of these priorities will not be completed in 2005. Even some House members are doubtful about the prospects of completing such an ambitious schedule. It has been reported that Rep. Jim McCrery (R-LA) of the Ways and Means Committee doubts the House can pass its tax bill, complete a conference with the Senate, and pass the conference report before the end of the year. But the appropriation bills must be passed before Congress recesses again unless the continuing resolution (CR) the federal government is currently operating under is extended for a third time. The Labor/HHS bill was all but finished a few weeks ago. House and Senate conferees approved the final conference report, and passage was assumed to be a mere formality. But in one of the biggest legislative surprises of the year, 22 House Republicans defied their leadership and joined with all Democrats to reject the conference report on Nov. 17. Whether the Defense and Labor/HHS measures--the two largest spending bills--will be combined or passed separately remains unclear. The Senate prefers to return to conference and negotiate a solution to the Labor/HHS bill that will satisfy enough House members to pass it as a stand alone bill. Yet House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) prefers to skip what could be difficult negotiations and extend funding for the programs under the bill with a long-term extension of the CR. If passed separately, the Defense bill will still undoubtly serve as a "catch-all" for other unrelated spending items. It will become something of a de facto omnibus, containing a number of non-military items such as a reallocation of Hurricane Katrina reconstruction funds, and funding for avian flu countermeasures. If the Defense bill is passed by itself in that manner, the Labor/HHS bill will most likely be funded throughout the rest of this fiscal year by the CR. In addition to signaling Congress' failure to complete its work in a timely and responsible manner, omnibus appropriations bills serve as vehicles for reckless pork barrel spending. They give legislators the opportunity to pack specialized earmarks into the appropriations process with little oversight, because few people either inside Congress or out have the time or access to know the details of all the provision of such massive bills before they are voted on. Unfortunately, regardless of how Congress decides to fund the Labor/HHS bill, programs it covers will see cuts this year. Funding under the CR will impose a real across-the-board cut on all programs due to population increases and inflation. A continuing resolution for the bill would slash services by $1.4 billion below the conference report level, and these cuts would particularly hurt low-income families. Moreover, groups that depend on federal funding are currently hampered in their efforts to plan for the forthcoming year because of funding uncertainties.