Before departing for a week-long St. Patrick's Day recess, Congress succeeded in further mangling the fiscal state of the nation. The House passed a costly emergency supplemental bill, while the Senate approved a misguided budget resolution. At the same time, both chambers approved an increase to the nation's debt limit to pay for their fiscal decisions. The $92 billion emergency supplemental measure passed by the House will significantly increase current deficits and do so by circumventing standard budget procedures. The House measure, approved on March 16 in a 348-71 vote, allows the White House and Congress to sidestep spending caps by passing needed spending under the category of "emergency," when in fact said spending has been anticipated for months. The bill appropriates $91.9 billion in spending for this fiscal year, $67.6 billion of which will be spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When President Bush first sent the supplemental requests to Congress, the funding for war operations and hurricane relief were separate, but the House Appropriations Committee bundled the requests together, much to the chagrin of a number of House deficit hawks. Among the non-war-related spending included in the bill, $4.3 billion was appropriated for foreign aid and $19.2 billion for hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast. The bill also allows for $750 million to be shifted for Fiscal year 2006 low-income heating assistance programs, an important but somewhat tardy gesture. Part of the hurricane package also includes $4.2 billion for housing in the form of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). This funding for CDBG is a perfect example of the use of questionable budgetary practices by this Congress and administration, in order to fund important programs. The President's Fiscal year 2007 budget proposes $1 billion in cuts to the CDBG program (from $4 billion last year to $3 billion for FY07). As Nation's Cities Weekly recently pointed out, the proposal would mark the lowest level of funding for the program since 1990. Yet the White House and Congress are now appropriating CDBG funding through the emergency supplemental process. Not only does it make them less accountable to deficit-control measures, but it also sets up a "robbing Peter to pay Paul" situation, giving a false picture of how much funding is actually appropriated for CDBG. Notably, a number of House conservatives revolted against certain aspects of the bill, specifically those regarding spending on hurricane relief. Twenty-nine members, mostly from the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), broke with their party and voted against a rule to consider the supplemental because they were upset at the lack of offsets to the spending. Despite the efforts of RSC members Mike Pence (R-IN) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the rule passed 218-200. An amendment by Hensarling and Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) to provide offsets for hurricane spending was found by the Rules Committee to be out of order. However, House Republicans did reject an amendment to add an additional $1.9 billion to the bill to help with the post-hurricane housing crisis in a 212-210 vote. An amendment that would have put $825 million toward improved port security also failed. The Senate has yet to mark up its version of the emergency spending bill, and is not expected to do so until sometime in April. It is unclear if the Senate will attempt to include any offsets for non-defense spending in its version.