With two weeks remaining for Congress to keep the federal government funded, the House Republican in charge of U.S. EPA spending said negotiators have not started discussing the fate of dozens of riders restricting Obama administration energy and environmental policies.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the House Appropriations subpanel for EPA and the Interior Department, said that "we're making progress" in talks with Senate Democrats on funding levels for the remainder of fiscal 2012. But lawmakers have yet to discuss which of the 38 riders the House GOP attached to its Interior-EPA bill would make it into the final version of an omnibus spending package that could come to the House floor the week of Dec. 12, he added.

Leaders of both parties face a daunting task in cobbling together enough votes to pass that massive omnibus, which is also expected to set Energy Department funding levels for 2012, given the all-but-assured Democratic opposition to policy riders and Republican resistance to its fiscal threshold. The August pact that raised the federal debt limit set 2012 spending at $1.043 trillion, but some conservatives had hoped to fall below that ceiling and some liberals saw its attendant cuts as too draconian to support.

Among the riders House Republicans attached to their Interior-EPA bill, pulled from the floor mid-debate in August, were provisions blocking the administration's plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as air and water pollution, and separate limits on mining and wildlife species management (E&ENews PM, Aug. 1).

Asked if Republicans could pursue a deal that eliminated some of the more contentious environmental riders from a final omnibus -- such as the restriction on EPA's emissions rules -- in exchange for preserving some smaller-scale riders, Simpson said "you could see something like that" but cautioned the process is still in its early stages.

As the House GOP often points out, the Senate's Interior-EPA spending bill included several riders of its own despite Democratic howls over the more high-profile policy limits in the House version. One rider in the Senate measure would triple the amount of time Interior can take to review oil and gas drilling plans, and another would create new wilderness as well as required logging areas in Montana (E&E Daily, Oct. 17).

The House paved the way for consideration of an omnibus during the week of Dec. 12 yesterday by extending its target adjournment date for 2012 (E&ENews PM, Dec. 1). Still, an impasse over riders could force appropriators to approve a fresh continuing resolution that would keep the government open until late January or February while giving negotiators more time to work on the 2012 blueprint.