Hoyer eyeing Thursday for House vote; GI Bill offset included (Updated below) By cancelling approps markups this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has cleared the deck for floor consideration of that chamber's latest revision of the war supplemental spending package. With the exception of additional funds for midwest region's recent flooding disaster (speculation is $2 billion-ish), the House bill is shaping up to look pretty much like the original sent to the Senate oh-so-long ago:

• Fulfillment of the remaining war funding request for FY 2008 and part of FY 2009

The House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee approved, by voice vote, a $22.4 billion bill that would provide funds for the Treasury Department and the District of Columbia. Included in the measure is $11.4 billion for the IRS, a slight increase over the president's request and over $300 million more than the current budget. And while the IRS' enforcement budget allotment matches the president's request -- a respectable 7 percent increase over current levels --, the committee saw fit to raise Bush's $2.15 billion request for taxpayer services funding by $60 million.

Writing in The New York Times, James Risen brings us an astonishing article on the circumstances surrounding the firing of the Army official in charge of overseeing the KBR contract in Iraq. It's not only galling to read that the chief of the Field Support Contracting Division of the Army Field Support Command Charles M. Smith was sacked because he refused to approve payment for unsubstantiated work by KBR, but it's a sharp reminder of how the current level of Iraq contracting has lead to billions and billions of wasted federal funds. Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. "They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn't justify," he said in an interview. "Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn't going to do that." But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR's claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block. That's awful. But, the Army's rationale for making sure the cash spigot flows unabated signals even deeper problems with Pentagon procurement.

If at First You Don't Succeed... Last week, a bid by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to invoke cloture (to stop debate and allow voting) on the Senate tax break extender bill fell short by ten votes (see background squib). But it appears that the Senate will vote on the cloture motion again later this afternoon.