Congressional Democrats plan to skip work on passage of a new Hanford budget for the 2007 fiscal year that began in October and move on to the 2008 budget.

Congress adjourned for the year last week without Senate action on the bill that includes the Hanford budget, the energy and water appropriations bill, and eight others.

Instead, a continuing resolution was passed to keep the government operating until mid-February, more than a third of the way through the fiscal year 2007, at current funding levels.

Democrats are blaming Republicans for not passing nine appropriations bills for fiscal year 2007, which began in October.

The chairmen who will lead the Senate and House Appropriations Committees next year under new Democratic majorities announced this week that they will "dispose of the Republican budget leftovers by passing a yearlong joint resolution."

"Clearly, it's not an ideal situation," said Alex Glass, spokeswoman for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

While details of the continuing resolution proposed to pay for Hanford and other government programs through September 2007 have yet to be worked out, some Hanford funding is likely to be in jeopardy.

The continuing resolution set funding at the fiscal year 2006 level or the amount set in the budget passed by the House, whichever is less. The House had approved a $600 million budget for the vitrification plant under construction at Hanford and the Senate budget, which did not make it to the full Senate, set it at $690 million.

For the vitrification plant, that means operating under an annual budget of $526 million. When construction began on the $12.2 billion plant to treat some of Hanford's worst waste, plans were based on steady funding of $690 million a year.

The details of the yearlong continuing resolution proposed by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-Va., and Rep. Dave Obey, D-Wis., are not yet known.

"We will do our best to make whatever limited adjustments are possible within the confines of the Republican budget to address the nation's most important policy concerns," they said in a joint statement.

Congress will start work on the new continuing resolutions after the 110th Congress convenes in January, Glass said.

Last week Murray criticized Republicans for refusing to move the energy and water bill forward before adjourning. She said that would lead to funding delays at Hanford and will mean that cleanup will take longer and cost more.

The office of Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., responded by pointing out that the Republican-led House passed all but one of its funding bills. Hastings believes continuing resolutions are a poor way of doing business, said Todd Young, his chief of staff.

Although the Senate Hanford budget that was not voted on included more money for the vitrification plant than the House budget, it included less money for some other projects.

The House budget would have increased money to build replacement laboratories at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In addition, it included more money for technologies to clean up contaminated ground water at Hanford and for the bulk vitrification test project.

Although the details of the yearlong continuing resolution are unknown, the Department of Energy likely will have some discretion on how it spends budgeted money.