House GOP may balk at some provisions in supplemental

The international aid portion of President Bush's $81.9 billion fiscal 2005 war supplemental request is coming under scrutiny from House GOP leaders, adding another complication to an already simmering debate over unrelated border security and immigration provisions that threaten to slow the must-pass measure.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said Wednesday that House Republicans were unified around Bush's funding requests for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as tsunami relief.

"[However], in our initial review of the president's request we have found some items in foreign aid that probably do not qualify as immediate emergencies," DeLay said, adding that he expects the supplemental on the House floor the week of March 14, the same week as the fical 2006 budget resolution.

House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., said, "First and foremost, the bulk of this supplemental is designed to make sure money is available for the troops and it does fall largely under what is understood to be acceptable emergency provisions." But Lewis added that about $4 billion under the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee will be "particularly scrubbed" by appropriators. "If the work can be done in the regular order in the '06 process, that's where we'll put it," he said during DeLay's weekly meeting with reporters.

Lewis did not single out particular items, but said appropriators would begin the vetting process Wednesday during a Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee hearing with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Outside of tsunami relief, the foreign aid portion makes up about $5.6 billion of the $81.9 billion measure, with the rest going to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Of particular concern among House Republicans has been a $200 million emergency request for the new Palestinian leadership. Other items that could be scrutinized include the president's requests for more than $2 billion in Afghanistan reconstruction funds; and funding for Pakistan, Jordan, and other unspecified nations in a so-called Global War on Terror Partners Fund.

Meanwhile, the plans of House GOP leaders to attach border security legislation to the supplemental are attracting attention in the Senate, which is decidedly cooler to House Judiciary Chairman John Sensenbrenner's, R-Wis., bill, which also passed the House last week as a stand-alone measure. Sources said today that Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is gearing up to offer as an amendment to the Senate supplemental the bipartisan bill he has co-sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to overhaul the H-2A agricultural guest-worker program and make it easier for temporary farm workers to attain legal status.

"If they want to open up the immigration debate on a supplemental bill, we're ready to do that," a Craig spokesman said. But DeLay said today the House would oppose such efforts. "Again, this is not immigration reform. This is border security. We are interested in immigration reform, and [Sensenbrenner] has plans for immigration reform, and the supplemental bill is not where immigration reform ought to be."