Just when Democratic House leadership thought it was safe to bring a $183.6* billion war supplemental spending bill to the House floor for a vote, the Blue Dog coalition bares their teeth. We briefly mentioned yesterday that the coalition has expressed their displeasure that an expansion of college benefits for veterans would not be offset. By signaling that they would not support the rules package under which the war supp would be debated, they have induced Democratic leadership to find offsets, thus postponing a vote until at least next week. The provision is question is know in the Senate as the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 (S. 22), a bill introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and cosponsored by 57 senators. The CBO scored the bill as costing $40 million the first year, $680 million the second, and totalling almost $52 billion over ten years. Blue Dogs' insistence on offsetting these costs has drawn the ire of the Out of Iraq Caucus. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) was incredulous ($). "How can the Blue Dog Coalition possibly say that an expansion of education benefits is too costly when their votes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight in Iraq violate the same pay-as-you-go rules they claim to so deeply respect? It's an inconsistent logic." But, is Hinchey right to insist the Blue Dogs selectively apply PAYGO? *That's the commonly-used dollar amount in press accounts. That number, however, does not include $11 billion for extended unemployment benefits (over 10 ten years) and $720 million for expanded GI Bill benefits (over 2 years). With those factored in, the bill would be about $200 billion

This afternoon, the House adopted the first in a set of housing-related bills, H.R. 5818, the Neighborhood Stabilization Act, by a vote of 239-188. The bill would establish a $15 billion, HUD-administered loan and grant program for the purchase and rehabilitation of vacant, foreclosed homes with the goal of occupying them as soon as possible. One half of the funds ($7.5 billion) would be for loans; half ($7.5 billion) would be for grants. The bill:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and House Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-WI) told lawmakers today that Democratic House leadership will advance a $183.6 billion war supplemental spending bill. It combines the remainder of President Bush's FY 2008 request and his partial FY 2009 request and will fund the wars in Iraq an Afghanistan through the remainder of Bush's term. The bill, which could be voted on early as Thursday, includes several domestic spending provisions:

• $11 billion (over 10 years) for unemployment insurance expansion