Parallel political dramas over Energy Department loans and aid to rebuild from extreme weather events are set to converge on the House floor this week, as the GOP seeks to strip $1.5 billion from the former program to offset more spending on the latter.

While House Republicans are all but assured the votes to pass their nine-week continuing resolution (CR), a must-pass measure that keeps federal agencies funded past the Sept. 30 end of the 2011 fiscal year, battle lines are forming over their move to offset extra disaster relief funding by slashing a DOE program that promotes fuel-efficient cars.

Republicans ascribed the decision to fiscal hawkishness, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia noting that the DOE "money has been laying around since September 2008" (E&E Daily, Sept. 16). But frustrated Democrats are pushing back at the proposed DOE cuts by charging the GOP with economic hara-kiri, citing estimates of more than 35,000 jobs set to be created or saved in the next round of awards to carmakers, expected before 2012.

Perhaps most importantly for the president's party, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) -- a longtime defender of clean-vehicle investments -- won 10 GOP votes last week for a $7 billion disaster relief package that was not offset by corresponding budget cuts.

That vote could put the Senate at an advantage in the fight over whether to pay for extra Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding necessitated by recent floods and hurricanes. But a simmering scandal over a DOE loan to now-bankrupt solar firm Solyndra, awarded on a separate track from the clean-car program, could give Republicans a leg up in the messaging war over how to offset the FEMA infusion.

More than 60 Democrats are set today to publicly urge House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to preserve the DOE Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan money in a letter spearheaded by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.).

The letter is expected to echo Democratic entreaties to spare the program based on estimates that its $9 billion-plus in already disbursed loans have created or saved 41,000 jobs in nine states. Republicans, however, question the viability of Obama administration jobs projections, particularly in the wake of the Solyndra flameout.

On top of the $1.5 billion cut from the DOE clean-car loans, the House's stopgap spending bill cuts 1.4 percent from most agency budgets to keep federal funds within caps set by the bipartisan debt-limit agreement reached last month. The House plan, which funds the government until Nov. 18, also maintains money for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and extends the availability of federal flood insurance.

While House members debate their latest continuing resolution, two former Congressional Budget Office directors are set to deliver timely testimony before the chamber's Budget Committee on the "broken ... process" that governs legislators' use of their power of the purse.

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 10 a.m. in 210 Cannon.

Witnesses: Brookings Institution senior fellow Alice Rivlin and Urban Institute senior fellow Rudolf Penner.