By Emelie Rutherford
The House was slated to consider last night $161.8 billion in war funding within a larger $186.5 billion supplemental spending bill that had been negotiated with the White House to avoid a presidential veto.
That war-specific funding is slightly less than what the House considered and the Senate passed last month.
Provided the bill passed the House last night, after Defense Daily‘s deadline, the Senate is expected next week to take up the legislation. It covers war-related spending for much of fiscal year 2008 and FY ’09.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants to send the long-debated legislation to the White House by the Fourth of July recess, which begins a week from today.
“We are optimistic that when we send it to the Senate, it will proceed from there to the president’s desk,” Pelosi told reporters yesterday. “But I can never predict what will happen on the Senate side.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters yesterday the Senate will take up the bill next week, but stopped short of promising its passage.
The White House previously threatened to veto the war supplemental over the added non-war spending and war-policy changes. Yet in negotiations with House leaders Wednesday, the Bush administration agreed to allow some domestic spending–including a GI Bill expansion–and lawmakers agreed to drop some domestic-funding items and language calling for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
The House was slated last night to vote on two amendments, according to the office of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.). The first called for $165.4 billion in war activities, which would match the war-funding rundown in the supplemental spending bill that passed the Senate May 22 (Defense Daily, May 23). That $165.4 billion in war-funding rundown is slightly more generous that the $162.6 billion in war funding the House rejected May 15 (Defense Daily, May 16).
However, the House was expected last night to vote on a second amendment to reduce that $165.4 billion in war funding by $3.6 billion, for a new total of $161.8 billion. The second amendment included funds for items including an expand GI bill, unemployment insurance extension, and disaster assistance.
The $165.4 billion rundown that previously cleared the Senate called for 15 C-17 Globemaster airlifters, 34 C-130 aircraft, 13 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters, $1.6 billion for Army Humvees, $1.7 billion for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and $2 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat fund. Details of the truncated $161.8 billion in spending were not immediately available yesterday.