Democrats seek to avoid Iraq funding vote this fall
By ANDREW TAYLOR
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats in Congress, seeking to avoid a vote on funding the Iraq war during the fall campaign season, are considering combining President Bush's two pending requests into a single bill to be voted on this spring.
House Democratic aides said Thursday that Bush's $108 billion request to finance military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30, the end of the 2008 budget year, may be combined with his $70 billion request to continue the war into the next president's term.
"You vote one time and get the money out of the way," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House panel responsible for the Pentagon budget. He cautioned that House leaders have not officially endorsed the idea.
But votes on war spending bills inevitably generate tension among Democrats and unhappiness among their core supporters, who are strongly opposed to providing money for the war. That has leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hoping to avoid a second vote in the fall.
Democrats are struggling behind the scenes to coordinate strategy for passing the war funding bill, a task made more difficult by a recent Bush threat to veto any domestic add-ons to the war spending measure that would raise its price tag above his request.
Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami cautioned that Democrats have yet to unite behind a strategy on how to tackle their nettlesome Iraq funding problem and that it's not certain the strategy for a combined funding will get the green light.
Democrats are poised to defy the veto threat by adding to the Iraq funding bill a measure to significantly expand education benefits for veterans.
The new GI bill, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., would greatly increase college education benefits for veterans to cover tuition and fees at most public universities. That would, on average, double college aid for veterans to about $12,000 per year at a cost of up to $4 billion a year under preliminary Congressional Budget Office estimates.
The additional money for college aid for veterans has bipartisan support and could be difficult for Bush to stop in an election year.
But there's little agreement among Democrats on what other items unrelated to Iraq and Afghanistan to try to add to the war funding bill. Senate Democrats are considering up to $10 billion simply for infrastructure projects such as roads, bridge repairs and school construction.
At an Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday, Democratic senators pressed a multitude of other ideas: crime-fighting grants; overseas food aid; heating subsidies; funding to combat western wildfires; and heating subsidies for the poor to name just a few.
The war supplemental appropriations bill is one of the few must-pass legislative vehicle to leave the stati on this year. That has lawmakers in both parties eying it as an engine to tug funding for their pet programs into law. Republicans were disappointed that Bush accepted about $17 billion in add-ons to last year's war funding bill and the White House is determined to avoid a repeat.
Meanwhile, Democrats are poised to clip almost $10 billion worth of savings from Bush's war funding request and shift the money to other purposes, including long-term purchases of next generation F-22 fighter planes, 15 C-17 cargo planes and 10 C-130 cargo planes. Another $3.5 billion would be diverted to pay for higher fuel costs.
The savings to pay for the military add-ons would come from a lower estimate for operations costs, reducing purchases of light trucks for the Army, and purchases of fewer combat radios, according to documents the Pentagon gave to lawmakers.
 
Defense appropriations chair doesn't need full committee markup on war funds
By Megan Scully and Humberto Sanchez
CongressDaily
April 18, 2008
House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., expressed no public objection Thursday to the possibility that Democratic leaders may skip a full committee markup of the pending war-related supplemental spending bill and send it directly to the floor for debate.
"It doesn't matter to me," said Murtha, who customarily presents the chairman's mark for any defense-related spending bill to the full committee. Any decision on the handling of the supplemental will be made directly by leadership, he added.
Democrats were planning to mark up the bill next week, with floor debate on the spending measure expected this month or in early May. Democratic Caucus sources said Thursday that leaders are considering sending the supplemental straight to the House floor.
Doing so would speed up the chamber's consideration of a massive war-funding package that could include $108 billion for fiscal 2008 and another $70 billion for the first several months of fiscal 2009, as well as money for domestic programs. Skipping a committee markup could limit opportunities to load the bill with amendments.
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., criticized any effort to bypass the appropriations panel, insisting Democrats should "use the committee process" for the supplemental.
As House Democrats continued to weigh their strategy for the supplemental, Murtha said Congress must complete work on the bill by June 15 to keep money flowing for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It has to be done," he said.
Pentagon leaders, who have grown increasingly impatient with Congress' slow action on war funding, have warned they need the supplemental to pay soldiers and cover wartime costs past June. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that he would like to see the money in May, saying continued delay threatens payment for some defense contracts, depot maintenance and repair work, and possibly family housing and other military construction.
Murtha said combining the pending fiscal 2008 supplemental with the emergency funding for the first several months of fiscal 2009 has some merit and would provide enough money for U.S. combat operations well into the next administration.
"You vote one time," Murtha said. "You get the money out of the way."
Blunt said the $70 billion to cover war-related costs for fiscal 2009 would not stretch as far as Democrats contended. He questioned whether taking up that funding indicates that little legislative work will be done this fall.
"I think that the additional level of spending is very much in line with their intended goals not to be here in November and December," he said. "This level of spending will take us through the election but it doesn't take us very far into next year."
Blunt said that making an fiscal 2009 down payment for the wars would not persuade Republicans to back any domestic spending Democrats might attach to the bill. President Bush has said he will not accept a supplemental with any provisions that aren't related to the war.
"It will not serve the purpose -- as far as the Republicans are concerned, or the White House is concerned -- of becoming a vehicle ... for spending that, even if appropriate, can certainly be done through the regular appropriations process," Blunt said.
Also Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Iraq must take over responsibility for its internal security. She sought to tie that issue to the coming war funding bill by arguing this must be made clear to the Iraqi government in the spending bill.
But with the specifics of the supplemental uncertain and the Bush administration adamantly opposed to the inclusion of policy directives in the bill, she appeared to tacitly acknowledge that she may have to seek another vehicle for that message.
"And that's why the message in a supplemental or something else about [U.S. troop] redeployment is essential to this, or else they [the Iraqis] will never move. And they haven't," Pelosi said.


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