Washington (Platts)--1Sep2011/531 pm EDT/2131 GMT

Before leaving for its August recess, the US House of Representatives spent several days debating a bill to fund the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency for fiscal 2012, which includes 40 or so provisions blocking various environmental regulations, but that debate is unlikely to resume when lawmakers return next week, a top House Republican said Thursday.

Instead, Congress is probably going to start work on a continuing resolution to ensure the government does not shut down when the fiscal year ends October 1, before turning to an omnibus appropriations bill to provide funding across the government, Representative Mike Simpson, who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, said in a phone interview.

As they did earlier this year in the drawn-out showdown over fiscal 2011 spending, Republicans likely will drop nearly all of the so-called riders blocking Interior and EPA rules from the omnibus bill, Simpson said, although he pointed to a few rules he and his colleagues would continue to push to block through an appropriations bill.

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"I think that the greenhouse gas limitation is one of the biggest ones when you're talking about the EPA," Simpson, an Idaho Republican, said "And also there are some dealing with the [maximum achievable control technology rules], the various utility MACT and boiler MACT and all of those that could have some significant impact on our economy. So we'll be focusing on some of those, but there are some that are more localized that may not be able to survive. I just don't know yet."

House leaders have not yet set a schedule for the appropriations bill, and Simpson said he has not yet discussed the Interior/EPA bill with his counterparts on the Senate Interior appropriations subcommittee, Jack Reed, Democrat-Rhode Island, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican-Alaska.

Senate Democrats, who maintain a majority in the upper chamber, and President Barack Obama blocked House GOP efforts to handcuff EPA and Interior during the FY11 spending debate that nearly led to a government shutdown. Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reached an 11th-hour deal on spending levels and a bill that included just two Interior riders, rather than the dozens that had been included targeting environmental regulations.

Whether Republicans succeed in blocking EPA rules -- an outcome several analysts and lobbyists see as unlikely -- attacks on the agency will remain a high priority in the House this fall and will serve as campaign trail fodder for next year's presidential and congressional elections. Majority Leader Eric Cantor earlier this week sent a memo to his colleagues listing 11 major regulations to block with stand-alone bills; eight were from EPA.

"I suspect a lot of it will ... be carried over to the campaign trail, about what the role of government is and the regulations that are being imposed -- are they excessive, are they beyond the legislative authority," Simpson said. "But we'll still fight for them within this [appropriations] bill and who knows how it'll turn out."

Debate over FY12 spending also is colored by the so-called Super Committee that was created to find additional spending cuts as part of last month's deal to raise the debt ceiling. Simpson predicted the committee would deal more with "big picture kind of stuff," such as spending on entitlement programs, rather than considering limits on EPA.

The Super Committee is slated to release its recommendations by mid-November, but Simpson said he would rather not wait until after the committee completes its work to finish the FY12 appropriations bills.

"I would like to get our appropriations for FY12 done before the Super Committee reports," he said. "Because otherwise the potential exists that we could do all this work and get everything done, and then the Super Committee comes up with something and we have to do it all over again."

--Nick Juliano, nicholas_juliano@platts.com