Congress Daily reports that House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has said “it’s about 50/50 whether we are going to have a [defense appropriations] bill this year.”

There has long been speculation that due to differences between President Bush and the Democratic Congress most of the appropriations bills (which contain Congressional earmarks) would be delayed until after the presidential elections in November. This despite the fact that fiscal 2009 begins on October 1, 2008.

There had been some hope that the defense and homeland security appropriations bills would at least move forward. However, these bills won’t be considered until the President’s fiscal 2008 supplemental appropriations request to provide extra funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is passed by Congress. The timing on consideration of this bill continues to slip, as Democrats try to decide how much domestic spending to add to the bill and how to deal with veto threats from the White House on the bill if more spending is added. As consideration of this bill is delayed, so consideration of all the appropriations bills is also delayed.

There is good news in all of this for those companies with new technologies that have not yet made earmark requests for fiscal 2009 – the window of opportunity is still open and may remain open longer than might otherwise be expected.