Congress Set to Consider Largest Supplemental Funding Request in History

Congress will soon begin work on the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested — $99.6 billion — to continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other items. The request was submitted to Congress by the president in early February, when the FY 2008 budget was released. If approved, this request would add $93.4 billion to the $70 billion Congress already appropriated for the "war on terror" in FY 2007 and bring the total cost of the wars to over $500 billion. Specifically, the emergency spending bill provides funding for:

  • ongoing military operations ($41.5 billion);
  • repairing and replacing equipment ($26.7 billion);
  • providing body armor ($10 billion);
  • training and equipping Afghan and Iraqi forces ($9.8 billion);
  • conducting intelligence activities ($2.7 billion);
  • combating roadside bombs ($2.5 billion);
  • miscellaneous items ($6.5 billion).

In addition to war funding, there is money allocated for State Department operations and aid to Pakistan, Lebanon, Kosovo, Sudan and Liberia, and $3.4 billion for continued relief efforts related to the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes. The $99.6 billion total makes this the largest emergency supplemental relief bill ever submitted to Congress.

The bill will be marked up by House and Senate Appropriations Committees during the week of Mar. 19 and the committee chairs, Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), hope to have the bills ready for floor consideration the following week. The president has said he wants the bill on his desk by the end of April.

Democrats have been somewhat divided as to what, if any, conditions or restrictions should be placed on the war funding. One idea now endorsed by the House leadership is Rep. John Murtha's (D-PA) proposal to impose readiness, rest and training requirements for all troops sent to Iraq but allowing President Bush to waive the requirement if he offers a public rationale for the waiver. Whether anti-war House Democrats will support this proposal is an open question, but the caucus seems to have consensus on one area — adding additional funding to the supplemental. Members in both chambers have signaled their intention to add several billion dollars for a variety of projects. Most are unrelated to the war and their urgency is arguable. Among the projects likely to be added via amendment are funding for:

  • BRAC — to house troops returning from overseas deployments as part of the 2005 base-closing round
  • Agriculture (Midwest) — to cover losses from drought, floods and other agricultural disasters during the past two years
  • Agriculture (California) — to cover losses from the recent frost that damaged citrus crops
  • Avian flu — to prepare for a potential bird flu outbreak
  • Pacific Northwest timber — to provide compensation to communities suffering from declining timber sales
  • SCHIP — to provide $750 million to the children's health insurance program to stave off immediate program cuts

If all of these amendments are adopted, the bill could end up costing over $110 billion and provoke a veto threat from a president, who purports to seek a balanced budget by 2012.

Yet it is not only those in Congress who are thinking of adding funding to the bill. One House member, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, charged in the Boston Globe on Mar. 5 that "the administration [itself] is misusing emergency budget requests in another way":

The bill contains much more than war-related items — $14 billion is requested for new armored vehicles.... Some of the so-called emergency replacement items in the 2007 request won't even be available until 2010 or later. We've been asked to replace two $20 million fighter aircraft with $200 million Joint Strike Fighters, which are still in development. If these were all replacements for vehicles damaged or worn out in combat, they would belong in an emergency spending bill. But this request goes far beyond replacing combat losses.

The number of unrelated spending items inserted by both branches and a deep lack of consensus within both parties in Congress on war strategy and funding will certainly make consideration of the supplemental bill difficult.

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