GOP OKs $94.5B Bill For Iraq, Katrina
House and Senate Republican leaders completed agreement Thursday on a long-sought $94.5 billion bill to pay for the war in Iraq and deliver a much-needed infusion of relief to Louisiana and other hurricane-ravaged states of the Gulf of Mexico coast.
The bill will not clear Congress for President George W. Bush's desk until next week, but the deal's official submission would ease Pentagon worries of a money crunch caused by weeks of delays in reaching a compromise.
Republican leaders overcame the last snag to agreement, insistence by two of the party's Senate moderates that the bill include a promise to increase future spending on education and health programs, by winning endorsement from Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.
The bill includes $65.8 billion for military operations and maintenance in Afghanistan and Iraq; personnel and energy costs; new weapons and ammunition; and an initiative to locate and disarm roadside bombs. It also contains $19.8 billion in new money for hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast.
The agreement ends weeks of mostly behind-the-scenes talks on Capitol Hill over how to balance lawmakers' hopes for additional hurricane relief with Mr. Bush's demand that the bill stick to his original $92.2 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan and hurricanes, with an additional $2.3 billion to combat bird flu.
The Senate-passed version of the bill had exceeded Mr. Bush's request by more than $14 billion, adding large sums for farm disasters, fisheries aid, veterans' medical care, port security and to compensate Texas for taking on evacuees of Katrina.
Most of that money was dropped, as was $289 million to create a fund to compensate people who might be injured by a pandemic flu vaccine.
The last snag involved a demand by Senate leaders to use the must-pass war funding bill to get around a House-Senate impasse over the annual budget blueprint Congress is supposed to produce each year.
The measure endorses Mr. Bush's $873 billion "cap" on the annual appropriations bills Congress passes each year. Under Congress' arcane budget rules, setting a cap on appropriations bills makes them much easier to pass through the freewheeling Senate.
But GOP Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio sided with Democrats on a House-Senate negotiating committee to insist on $7 billion in additional money on top of Mr. Bush's $873 billion cap for the upcoming annual spending bills. The pair refused to endorse the war spending bill without the additional promises for the future bills.
They wanted to dedicate the $7 billion to health and education programs; the White House and House GOP leaders were dead set against the idea.
"Period," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
"These are things I care very much about, education and children's health issues," DeWine said.
The $19.8 billion included in the bill for hurricane relief includes:
The compromise bill includes Mr. Bush's plan to provide 1,000 more Border Patrol agents along the Mexican border, deploy about 6,000 National Guard troops and build detention space for 4,000 illegal immigrants.
The bill also contains $4 billion in military and foreign aid for Iraq and other allies, and to combat famine in Africa and Afghanistan and support U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sudan.