By David Clarke and Liriel Higa, CQ Staff

Democrats are working on a sweeping plan to package a five-month stopgap spending bill that would keep the government from shutting down with a broad array of other provisions, including loans for the auto industry and new offshore-drilling rules.

The legislation also might include full-year fiscal 2009 funding for the Pentagon, homeland security and veterans totaling more than $600 billion.

The legislation is ostensibly intended to provide a baseline level of funding through March 6 to keep the government operating until the next president can work with Congress to finish its overdue fiscal 2009 appropriations work.

However, members are in a hurry to adjourn for the year and plunge full-time into campaign mode, so the stopgap spending bill appears likely to become a vehicle for a wide variety of legislation lawmakers hope to enact by the end of this week. The session-ending plan is under top-level congressional negotiations and subject to substantial revisions.

With the new fiscal year only a week away, the stopgap spending legislation — known as a continuing resolution (CR) — is needed because none of the fiscal 2009 appropriations bills have been enacted. However, Democrats could be forced to shorten the time covered by the CR, with it perhaps expiring soon after the Nov. 4 elections, if it meets strong White House opposition.

Democrats are considering packaging the CR with the fiscal 2009 Military Construction-VA, Homeland Security and Defense appropriations bills, according to aides. Of the three, which would allocate a total of about $600 billion in discretionary spending, only the Military Construction-VA measure has been considered on the House floor, and the Defense measure has not even been considered by the full Appropriations panel in either chamber.

The Senate has not passed any of the bills.

As a result, Republicans likely would complain fiercely that they have been largely shut out of the process of producing the bills. Nevertheless, putting funding for defense, veterans and homeland security in the CR package would make it significantly more difficult for Republicans to vote against it, even if they strongly object to some of its provisions, such as the drilling language.

Aides cautioned that no final decision has been made on what to include in a legislative package with the CR. Even the CR draft was described as a starting point in negotiations. “This is a draft. . . . It is not what we expect to file,” cautioned a House Democratic aide. “We’ve made several changes in the last 24 hours.”

However, Majority Whip James E. Clyburn , D-S.C., indicated the plan would snap into focus soon — and he hinted that Democrats might pour even more into the package. “There’s three different tracks here,” Clyburn said. “We’ve got this so-called bailout, we’ve got the CR and we’ve got a supplemental or stimulus measure. . . . Whether we wrap all those into one or move them on three tracks, that’s the question for the next 24 hours.”

The CR also could become a vehicle for infrastructure projects, Medicaid funding for states and an extension of unemployment insurance. The fate of the stimulus and recovery items is tied to negotiations over the financial bailout legislation proposed by the White House. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank , Da?`Mass., said Monday that Democrats do not plan to include stimulus items in the bailout legislation.

Regardless of what legislative vehicle is used, Frank said Democrats believe that the White House should accept some of the proposed stimulus items since Congress and the administration are working on a bailout of the financial sector.

“This can’t be the only problem in the economy that gets attention,” he said of the bailout legislation.