The Republican attempt to split up the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a controversial equation involving division, addition, subtraction and numbers with lots of zeroes.

Under the arcane rules of congressional arithmetic, the plan may fail in the coming days because of charges that it just doesn't add up.

House Republicans, long frustrated by the court's liberal bent and controversial rulings, have slipped their breakup plan into a $51 billion deficit-reduction bill. The House had been scheduled to consider the bill last Thursday, but a vote was delayed until this week at the earliest.

Costly breakup

But splitting up the West's only federal appellate circuit -- leaving California and Hawaii in the 9th and creating a new 12th Circuit for seven other Western states -- would cost between $14 million and $95 million in start-up costs alone, according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Then there's $13 million to $16 million in new annual spending for the plan.

With Congress trying to slash costs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the continued war in Iraq, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said it's inappropriate to insert a multimillion-dollar spending measure into a budget-cutting bill.

Her simple point, which she promises to formally raise in the Senate if the overall bill passes the House, could be enough to kill the plan because of a unique rule.

Under the Byrd Rule -- named for its creator, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. -- any senator can move to strip "extraneous matter'' from a budget reconciliation bill. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which includes the 9th Circuit split, is such a bill: an attempt to reconcile federal spending and revenue with budget goals enacted annually by Congress.

Reconciliation bills cannot be blocked with filibusters. But the Byrd Rule allows a senator to cut out any provision that defies the goals of the legislation -- in this case, cutting the budget deficit -- or is a substantial legislative proposal masquerading as a simple budgetary item. It takes 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to waive the Byrd Rule.

It's unlikely that supporters of splitting the 9th Circuit could muster that many votes in the Senate, which has rebuffed earlier legislative attempts to break up the San Francisco-based court.

"The Republicans are pushing it because they believe the circuit is too liberal,'' Feinstein said. The split is "not necessarily'' a bad idea, but it needs to be more thought out, she said.

"Let's wait and let's get this right,'' Feinstein said.

Her effort to derail the plan got a boost last week. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and the panel's top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote to the heads of the Senate's Budget Committee and declared their opposition to including the 9th Circuit split in the deficit-reduction bill.

But killing the proposed split may also wipe out something else in the deficit-reduction bill -- funding for seven new judges for the shorthanded 9th Circuit. One of the leading advocates of the split, House Judiciary Committee chair James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., considers the new judges a package along with the split of the 9th Circuit, said his press secretary, Jeff Lungren.

New spending

Lungren said it's OK to include new spending for the circuit in the deficit-reduction bill because the House Judiciary Committee still meets its overall goal of cutting $385 million over five years from the federal budget. The 9th Circuit -- by far the largest of all the appellate circuits -- is too large and inefficient to continue operating as it has, Lungren said.

"Shoving more judges at a system that's too big and cumbersome isn't the way to deal with this,'' Lungren said. "This is a package and we need to address it as a package.''