House debates cost of Kosovo operation

The potential price tag on the administration's fiscal 1999 supplemental spending request for the Kosovo operation remained a moving target Thursday, as House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Democratic leaders offered differing perspectives on how much the Kosovo supplemental should cost and what it should include.

While conservative House defense hawks have said the supplemental should cost from $16 billion to $18 billion and address broader military readiness needs than simply covering the cost of the Kosovo mission, the White House has floated numbers in the $3 billion to $4 billion range for a more narrowly focused spending plan.

House and Senate appropriators met Thursday afternoon with OMB Director Jacob Lew, so a formal request could be ready by week's end. Otherwise, it will have to wait until next week because House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, are leaving Friday on a delegation to Kosovo.

Hastert signaled sympathy for funding broader defense needs in the Kosovo supplemental, pointing to "pressing needs" not only in Kosovo but in Iraq and North Korea and saying, "We need to have the ability to protect American interests around the world."

Hastert judged the administration's reported estimates of the Kosovo supplemental as "not enough" and said, "We want more than just a bullet-for-bullet" accounting of the supplemental's cost. But when asked about spending up to $18 billion, without offsets, Hastert said only, "I think that's a lot of money."

At a separate event with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., expressed concern about expanding the supplemental to fund defense expenses Democrats believe are more properly funded in the fiscal 2000 Defense appropriations bill.

"We don't want to have the [FY2000] budget decided in an emergency supplemental ... I think we have to be very careful about totally destroying whatever the definition is of an emergency," Gephardt said.

Gephardt added that humanitarian disaster relief for Central America and economic relief for U.S. farmers now included in the FY99 disaster supplemental-but paid for with offsetting cuts over Democrats' opposition-ought to be included in the Kosovo emergency spending measure. Gephardt also acknowledged the larger budgetary impact of any emergency spending, saying, "Obviously any amount that we spend on foreign affairs and defense is in some way a trade-off with other things we want to do" domestically.

While FY99 emergency spending would come out of the Social Security surplus, it also could eat into the anticipated FY2000 on-budget surplus because some of the money is not likely to be spent until FY2000, and the CBO uses actual spending levels-or outlays-rather than budget authority to determine whether the budget is in deficit or surplus.

Meanwhile, the Senate this afternoon completed action on the FY2000 budget resolution by approving the conference report in a 54-44 vote.