After halting work on a marathon series of votes two weeks ago, the Senate is poised this week to approve a package of three spending bills that would set funding levels for the Agriculture and Transportation departments and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Senate is scheduled to pick up the "minibus" bill tomorrow and is expected to wrap up work on the measure relatively quickly. When votes on amendments stretched late into the night before the Senate's scheduled recess last week, lawmakers struck a deal that would allow them to take up a limited number of amendments. There are five amendments on the docket, including proposals concerning transportation funding for bike and pedestrian projects and a Food and Drug Administration ban on certain asthma inhalers.

Before leaving for their one-week recess, lawmakers agreed to cut off debate on the measure in an 83-16 cloture vote, indicating the bill should pass handily.

The package -- which would set the fiscal 2012 budgets for the Agriculture Department; Commerce, Justice and Science; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development -- would be the second fiscal 2012 spending measure to clear the Senate this year. The Senate passed the military-veterans affairs bill in July.

The bills squeeze federal spending in an attempt to meet budget targets: The measure would cut funding for farmland conservation programs below the levels set in the farm bill and reduce some marine accounts for NOAA.

The underlying bill allots $5 billion for NOAA and boosts the agency's weather and climate satellite program. But more than one-third of NOAA's 2012 appropriation would go toward satellite acquisition. Other NOAA programs will see administrative and overhead reductions to make up for the increased funding for the satellite program. NOAA's overall budget would be about a half-a-billion-dollar increase over the agency's fiscal 2011 budget but about half a billion less than what President Obama requested.

The transportation bill, which passed the Senate Appropriations Committee by a 28-2 vote, sets budget authority at $55.3 billion in fiscal 2012, $100 million below 2011 enacted levels. The bill maintained funding for several Obama administration initiatives, including a transit grant program, the TIGER livability grants and a sustainable communities initiative.

The funding levels are below what most industry groups would like to see and sets transportation and housing levels nearly $20 billion below the Obama administration's request for fiscal 2012. For transportation, legislators are hamstrung by the dwindling receipts from the federal gas tax.

Amendments

Among the amendments to be considered tomorrow is language from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would divert the "transportation enhancements" funding to a separate pool for emergency bridge repairs. The TE money, generally about 1 or 2 percent of the overall transportation budget, goes to projects including bike and pedestrian trails, historic preservation and other non-roads projects.

Paul said the language will help reduce waste and criticized the TE money as being for "beautification projects." Paul had previously pitched his proposal to Obama in September and said the administration was receptive to the idea (E&E Daily, Sept. 23).

A previous attempt to modify the TE funding from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) failed in a vote before the recess.

An amendment from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) would block FDA funding that would allow the agency to end the use of epinephrine inhalers by Dec. 31 of this year, as the agency announced it would do in a 2008 final rule. FDA found that there are enough non-ozone-depleting alternatives to the inhalers, which use chlorofluorocarbons, to end their use under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Language from Sen. Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) would target a section of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that spells out steps that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission must make before promulgating rules under the act. The amendment, for example, would require CFTC to set a schedule for the publication of certain final rules and do an assessment of how the rules affect economic growth and job creation. It also would require CFTC to more narrowly define the term "swaps," or transactions that electric utilities and other entities use to hedge their risks.

The Senate will also consider two more amendments, one that would reduce funding for the Rural Development Agency and another that would return the spending bill to the Appropriations Committee.

Leadership also identified seven additional pending amendments that could be considered after cloture if they are deemed relevant. among them is an amendment from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would bar funding for the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides grants and loan guarantees to agriculture producers and rural small businesses to make energy efficiency improvements.