A plethora of veto threats and the Senate's dithering over spending legislation have combined to all but guarantee the necessity of enacting a continuing resolution before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated that a continuing resolution will likely fund government operations for weeks, not months, time is not their only obstacle. Although it remains unclear how long it will take the Senate to complete its appropriations work, congressional leaders will also have to formulate a strategy to overcome President Bush's veto threats to see their spending priorities ultimately enacted. The House completed all its appropriations work on Aug. 5 when it passed its version of the Defense Appropriations bill. Across the Capitol, the Senate had passed only one of its spending bills (Homeland Security) when Congress adjourned for the month-long August recess. Upon returning from summer vacation, however, the Senate immediately passed both Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (92-1) and State-Foreign Operations (81-12) by veto-proof margins. However, of all three Senate-passed measures, none have been handed off to a conference committee for final negotiations with the House. While Senate floor action on Transportation-HUD is expected before the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, that will likely be the last spending bill passed by the Senate before the start of FY 2008. Bush is also doing his part to slow down enactment of the spending bills. He has threatened to veto nine of the House-passed bills, citing Congress's failure to "demonstrate a path to live within the President's top line" of $933 billion in total discretionary spending for seven of the bills. Although it is unlikely Congress will send to the president a veto-threatened spending bill before the end of the month, any veto of appropriations bills will delay enactment of new funding legislation for a significant length of time into the new fiscal year. Showing no indication that he intends to negotiate with Congress, the president's position on the FY 2008 appropriations bills is little more than executive feet stomping. His nominal rationale for adhering to a "top line" of $933 billion is a desire to avoid "irresponsible and excessive level of spending." Representing a little over two percent of his discretionary budget, and less than one percent of his total budget, the $22 billion difference between Congress's and the president's budgets is vanishingly small — hardly worthy of risking government shutdown and certainly not worth the attention it has garnered this year during budget debates in Washington. Despite its size in relation to the rest of the budget, the extra discretionary money would go a long way to reverse underinvestment in communities around the country. In addition, the reality of President Bush's fiscal record belies his claims of fiscal responsibility. Since taking office, the president has refused to veto a single spending bill even as many of his irresponsible policies caused the national debt to explode by more than $3 trillion. Bush may be serious about vetoing spending bills over insignificant differences, but he is hardly serious about fiscal responsibility. Presented with Bush's obdurate veto threats, Congress may seek to put the president in the politically awkward situation of vetoing massively popular spending bills. Because of broad bipartisan support shown for Military Construction-VA and Homeland Security appropriations bills, the Democratic Congress could attach other domestic spending bills with less Republican support to them in order to garner veto-resistant support. This will complicate the president's decision to veto combined spending bills as Congress may be able to override his veto. Congress's strong, bipartisan support of defense and homeland security spending may not only lead to a veto override, but rejection of must-pass spending may cost Bush a measure of his rapidly dwindling political capital. As the fiscal year draws to a close, the Senate is inching toward completing its appropriations duties, but is still far behind schedule. It remains highly unlikely that its saunter will turn into a sprint to pass the nine remaining spending bills, virtually guaranteeing the enactment of a continuing resolution to fund the beginning of FY 2008. But even if the Senate finishes its work and both chambers manage to complete conference negotiations before Oct. 1, Bush's veto threats present significant hurdles for timely enactment of next year's spending legislation.