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In the budget resolution that the Senate passed last month, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., set aside $35 billion for measures aimed at boosting the faltering economy this year. The Senate drew down $16 billion of those funds for the housing stimulus package it debated this week, leaving $19 billion for any other ideas that Conrad’s colleagues have. And they have offered him plenty.

“There were a whole series of things that were proposed to me this morning by colleagues through their staffs,” Conrad told reporters on April 8. “I’ve just made very clear … that those things were not appropriate.… They may be very good public policy, but they don’t fit a ‘stimulus’ description.”

Lawmakers are swamping Conrad, along with the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, with a myriad of proposals to include in economic legislation or in a must-pass emergency supplemental spending bill that is slated to provide $102 billion for the Iraq war and other security programs. Their funding requests—for heating assistance, unemployment benefits, food stamps, energy research, police departments, and even New Hampshire fishermen—will be competing for a limited number of spots in spending legislation this spring.

Congressional pressure for more spending built in December, when President Bush signed fiscal 2008 appropriations bills that tamped down on many popular programs. It intensified in February, when Bush signed an economic stimulus package of tax cuts and rebates that left out a slew of proposals pushed by House members and senators. Now the pressure is even greater as lawmakers predict that few, if any, of the fiscal 2009 appropriations bills could be signed into law this year, making this spring perhaps the only chance for them to boost favored programs before the November elections.

Democrats argue that Bush’s request for billions of dollars for rebuilding Iraq should be accompanied by spending for domestic programs. “There are some things that need to be done for this country,” Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told National Journal. “Some of the people in the White House should get up and look out the window. I think all they ever see is Baghdad. They ought to take a look around at America.”

Durbin said that stimulus legislation would likely be handled separately from the Iraq supplemental, potentially giving hopeful program advocates two additional chances to get the funding boosts they want. But both the supplemental and additional stimulus legislation face a variety of obstacles that will force lawmakers to choose budget winners and losers.

The supplemental, for example, would add a minimum of $102 billion to the deficit, assuming that Congress largely sticks with Bush’s proposed war and security funding, as is widely expected. Republican lawmakers have urged Democrats to keep the supplemental “clean,” meaning limited to defense spending. “This bill is for the troops,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the American Legion on April 1. “It’s about keeping our troops and our nation safe. We shouldn’t pork it up.”

Last spring, Democrats initially sent Bush a supplemental spending bill that included nearly $100 billion for the war and defense, as well as $21 billion for domestic programs. The White House objected to the domestic spending but ultimately agreed to $17 billion, including money for veterans health care, hurricane relief, children’s health programs, homeland security, and farm aid.

Veterans may again figure into this year’s supplemental, which could include increased education grants for those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Disaster relief will likely make it into this year’s bill as well. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she would push for wildland firefighting money, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., noted that her state is recovering from recent tornadoes and other storms. “We’ve got floods, we’ve got ground that is so saturated with water that we’ve got levees that are leaking and bodies that can’t be buried,” Lincoln said.

Lincoln added that U.S. bridges and roads need repairs, suggesting infrastructure as another candidate for spending this spring. “I want to encourage everybody, as we look at this emergency supplemental, that we also look at a recovery infrastructure stimulus package that can mirror what we’re doing in Iraq,” she said.

Lawmakers from both parties have sent letters to the Appropriations Committee chairmen requesting money in the supplemental.

• Fifty-six senators—including 15 Republicans—asked the Appropriations Committee for an extra $500 million for law enforcement grants to be included in the supplemental. The money would go to the Edward Byrne Justice Grants program, which helps pay for additional police and prosecutors at the local level. Last year’s supplemental included $50 million for the program.

• Six Democrats, led by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., requested $200 million more for international food-assistance programs.

• Five Democrats and two Republicans in the Senateasked for $350 million for scientific research programs that they said were underfunded in the fiscal 2008 appropriations bill.

• New Hampshire Republican Sens. Judd Gregg and John Sununu asked for $2 million to help their state’s fishermen, who are dealing with new limits on fishing in coastal waters. Massachusetts fishermen received $13.4 million in aid in the fiscal 2008 appropriations bill.

On top of the lawmakers’ requests, federal agencies will also be hitting up appropriators for help this spring. The Census Bureau, for example, recently abandoned a plan to use handheld computers to gather information from Americans in the 2010 decennial census. That decision will cost the bureau an additional $200 million this year. The Bush administration has asked Congress to pay for the overrun by cutting funding elsewhere in the budget of the Commerce Department, the bureau’s parent. But the administration’s proposed cuts all come from programs popular with Democrats, including some projects that were specifically requested as earmarks.

“This is a nonstarter,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., told Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez at an April 3 House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. Some of the program cuts that the administration suggested involved the Chesapeake Bay, in Ruppersberger’s home state. He and other lawmakers told Gutierrez to seek the money in the supplemental instead. “If a supplemental is good enough for Iraq, and the citizens of Iraq, it’s good enough for our country,” he said.

Meanwhile, programs left out of the first economic stimulus bill passed in February will be seeking a home in the second stimulus bill that Democrats have planned for later this spring. Extended unemployment compensation, plus extra food stamps and heating-bill help for the poor, are among the likely candidates.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said he now wishes that he hadn’t voted for the first stimulus bill, because it didn’t include such measures. “We need real stimulus, and that is putting money into things like food stamps,” Harkin said. “We’re going to bail out Bear Stearns and all the rich people on Wall Street, and yet people can’t get enough food to feed their families.”

But a second stimulus bill faces a hurdle within the Democratic Caucus. A group of 26 House Blue Dog Democrats, worried about the rising deficit, sent a letter on April 4 to the Budget committees suggesting that spending in a second stimulus bill should be offset—or accompanied by cuts elsewhere in the budget. Otherwise, the Blue Dogs warned that they will vote against the budget resolution that sets the terms for the year’s spending debate. “The last thing we should do is fuel the fire by further reducing the already negative national savings rate, a large component of which is the federal government’s fiscal position,” the lawmakers wrote.

Republicans are also grumbling about adding too much spending to stimulus legislation. “Most of these stimulus packages have become walking-around money for various interest groups,” Gregg, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, told NJ. “That’s all they are.”

If last year’s fight over the supplemental bill is any guide, however, lawmakers will be able to get at least some money for their favored domestic programs this spring. But like last year, it will be a battle.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., warned members of the Communications Workers of America at an April 8 conference that he expects a brawl with Bush over spending priorities. “He’s not changing his tune, he’s not changing his positions, and he’s threatening to veto any appropriations bills that depart from his recommendations by more than $1,” Obey said. “This year, we’re stuck in a Groundhog Day loop.” -bfriel@nationaljournal.com