Washington – The White House is taking aim at much of the $21 billion in congressional add-ons to President Bush’s funding request for the Iraq war.
Billions of dollars for heating subsidies, farmers and wildfire fighting are likely to be dropped when lawmakers draw up a second bill after Bush’s veto Tuesday of the first. Additional money for the Pentagon, veterans and hurricane victims is likely to survive.
Help for farmers in southeastern Colorado who were hit by heavy snow this winter also is apt to be on the chopping block.
The extras that Democrats tacked onto the bill have been largely overshadowed in the test of wills between Bush and rivals in Congress over the war in Iraq.
But White House allies on Capitol Hill are itching for a fight that would demonstrate to Republican core voters that the party is serious about challenging government spending.
“The bill is loaded up with billions of dollars in nonemergency spending that has nothing to do with fighting the war on terror,” Bush said Tuesday after vetoing the measure. “Congress should debate these spending measures on their own merits and not as a part of an emergency-funding bill for our troops.”
Democrats have already dropped much-mocked money for peanut and sugar-beet farmers, U.S. Capitol tour guides, avocado and orange growers, spinach producers and grants to Denver and Minneapolis, hosts of next year’s political conventions.
But those provisions added up to just a pittance when compared with the overall $21 billion. Almost half of what’s left is related to the battle against terrorism, including $4 billion above Bush’s request for the Pentagon, almost $2 billion for health care for veterans and $2.3 billion for homeland security.
Bush and his GOP allies in Congress are expected to eventually concede to the extra Pentagon money, while additional funding for medical care for veterans and active-duty troops is politically bulletproof.
There’s more doubt, but ample precedent, for add-ons such as doubling Bush’s $3.4 billion request for more Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and the homeland security money, which would buy items such as baggage-screening machines.
The White House, however, is insistent on killing $3.5 billion in farm disaster aid – including for Colorado farmers – even though the money is supported by many Republicans and chiefly benefits GOP-leaning constituencies.
It’s unlikely that other legislation providing the money could be passed anytime soon, said Cody Wertz, spokesman for Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
