House panel sends $81 billion supplemental war bill to floor

House appropriators Tuesday sped an $81.2 billion emergency spending bill to the floor, after barely tacking on an extra $150 million for famine aid to the devastated Darfur region of Sudan.

In approving the massive supplemental spending bill, the Appropriations Committee trimmed about $650 million from an original request by President Bush for $81.9 billion. The money, chiefly to pay for waging war in Iraq, is technically off budget and not counted against the nation's booming deficits, except when it comes to settling accounts with the country's creditors.

The committee also rearranged some of the president's priorities in the bill, adding $1.8 billion to the request for Defense money for a total of $76.8 billion for this fiscal year. The bill also provides for a new death benefit of $100,000, retroactive to October 2001 and the start of the war in Afghanistan, for uniformed members of the military services killed in the line of duty.

Although Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., insisted his panel's subcommittees "scrubbed" the president's request of non-emergency items, the bill contains large sums for Pentagon programs that will stretch far beyond this fiscal year, such as the modernization and restructuring of combat arms, as well as billions for "quality of life" improvements for military members and their families and the replacement of worn-out or destroyed equipment.

By lumping such items in the emergency legislation, the administration and Congress avoid having to account for the costs in the regular Defense budget.

The bill also provides $5.7 billion to train and equip Iraqi soldiers, according to Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., along with $1.28 billion for Afghan troops. "This is our exit strategy," Young told the committee. "The sooner we can prepare them [to defend their own countries against insurgencies], the sooner we can start bringing our own troops home."

Before sending the bill to the floor by voice vote, the panel fended off most Democratic amendment. By a 32-31 vote, with help from a handful of defecting Republicans, an amendment by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., to provide $150 million in additional food assistance to Darfur was adopted.

Only one other Democratic proposal, by Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., to expand the number of GIs eligible for the new death benefit at a cost of $300 million, was accepted by Lewis, without a vote.

In addition to the Defense money, the bill contains $2.7 billion in foreign aid spending, including $656 million for tsunami recovery efforts in South Asia.

Of that total figure, $1.75 billion is classified as emergency spending and therefore released from the constraints of the budget caps.

The remaining $995 million, according to Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee chairman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., is treated as regular spending and was offset by rescinding unspent money in other foreign aid accounts, mainly for Turkey. Another $1.2 billion that Bush requested for emergency foreign aid purposes, Kolbe said, would be dropped from the supplemental and treated in the regular fiscal 2006 appropriations bill still under consideration.