House and Senate negotiators agreed Tuesday on an $82 billion fiscal 2005 emergency spending package for Iraq, Afghanistan and tsunami relief. Final passage is all but assured, with floor action expected Thursday in the House and in the Senate next week.
The agreement reflects a belief among lawmakers that more funds are necessary to protect troops overseas and borders at home, while placing slightly less stock in some of the White House's foreign aid requests.
As is customary, lawmakers also included some local priorities, such as redirecting existing funds to study preservation of Rio Grande River silvery minnows, providing debt service on a firefighting training academy in Elko, Nev., and allowing oil and gas exploration along Mississippi's Gulf Islands National Seashore.
Completion of the bill comes as the Army faces a severe cash crunch; the Pentagon was forced Monday to submit a $1.1 billion request to transfer funds within existing accounts to cover shortfalls.
As drafted, the conference report would provide $75.9 billion for military activities, a $920.6 million increase over the administration's request. The measure "provides the resources needed by our military forces to protect our country and win the war against terror," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., said in a statement.
The administration did not get all it wanted in foreign aid, but lawmakers came close. The conference agreement would trim the total international price tag by about $1.5 billion to $4.1 billion, although that is partly offset by a $1 billion rescission of previously appropriated funds for Turkey.
Not including the offset, appropriators came up about $500 million shy of the White House request, cutting about $283 million in Afghanistan reconstruction projects considered lower priorities and $100 million from contributions to United Nations peacekeeping missions, while trimming some of the funds requested to build and operate a new embassy in Baghdad.
They also cut $170 million from a $400 million request for aid to unspecified allies in the war on terrorism -- despite a heavy White House lobbying effort and a last-ditch effort led by House International Relations member Dan Burton, R-Ind. -- while increasing overseas food aid by $90 million, to $240 million.
The measure also provides $635 million for border protection the administration did not request, including $450 million in new funding at the behest of Senate Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
That includes $274 million to pay for 500 border patrol agents, 50 immigration and customs inspectors, 168 enforcement agents and detention officers, and 1,950 detention beds. The measure also includes House-backed provisions making it easier for judges to reject immigrants' asylum claims, tightening restrictions on drivers' licenses, and expediting completion of a fence on the California-Mexico border.
The military funds include $17.4 billion for procurement, with a $1.37 billion increase over the president's request for Army and Marine Corps accounts. The funds are aimed at replacing equipment lost in battle, bolstering force protection needs such as night-vision goggles and add-on armor kits, and outfitting troops rotating into Iraq and Afghanistan.
The measure also takes aim at some longer-term Pentagon budget proposals. It would block cancellation of a multiyear C-130J transport plane contract and postpone a decision on reducing the number of Navy aircraft carriers from 12 to 11, a step that would effectively mothball the USS John F. Kennedy. It would also bar the Navy from concentrating work on the DD(X) next-generation destroyer at a single shipyard, a top priority of Cochran and others from shipbuilding states whose yards stand to lose under the Navy's "winner-take-all" strategy.
Cochran and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., kept the measure relatively clean of provisions unrelated to the war or disaster aid. In a blow to Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, they did not include his provision to expedite construction of a Gilberton, Pa., clean coal facility.
And despite the best efforts of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M, conferees did not include $95 million for water and agriculture projects in Nevada's Walker River Basin, or $26 million to transfer nuclear materials out of New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory.