Military's looming cash shortage spurs talks on spending bill
Funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan might be depleted by mid-November.
Conferees on the fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill are expected to get down to work sometime next week, allowing roughly three weeks to hammer out differences between the House and Senate-passed versions of the legislation before the military's operations accounts run dry.
Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Tuesday that he wants both chambers to pass the conference report by Veterans Day, Nov. 11, and hopes President Bush will sign the legislation by Nov. 15.
Stevens has said that funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan might be depleted by mid-November, making passage of the Defense spending bill -- which includes a "bridge fund" to pay for those operations through early spring -- a top priority. Congress approved a continuing resolution to fund government agencies, but that expires Nov. 18.
"We can't find big dollars right now," Stevens said.
Bush has threatened to veto the Defense spending bill if it includes an amendment overwhelmingly passed by the Senate that would standardize detainee interrogation procedures. Nearly a year into his second term, Bush has not yet vetoed any legislation.
When asked whether he feared a veto on the Defense spending bill, Stevens replied, "I haven't crossed that bridge yet. I don't know yet."
House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member John Murtha, D-Pa., said a veto is not an option.
"We'll work it out," Murtha said. "We'll never let that happen."
Among the biggest issues for conferees to tackle is an amendment to the Senate bill that provides $3.9 billion in emergency spending to prevent a domestic outbreak of the deadly avian flu. The House measure does not include such language.
Stevens said he intends to work with the House and Senate health committees to draft language that would set policy on how the money should be spent. The Office of Management and Budget and the Health and Human Services Department are working now on a response plan in the event of an avian flu outbreak.
"I think we need a plan," Stevens said. "We don't just need to throw money at it."
Meanwhile, negotiations between Senate leaders and the Senate Armed Services Committee have not yet yielded a compromise on parameters that would govern debate on the defense authorization bill, shelved in late July after less than a week of debate.
Armed Services Airland Subcommittee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said senators continue to work the issue "every day."
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., penned a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., imploring him to reconsider accepting a unanimous-consent agreement Frist offered earlier this month. The compromise would limit debate to a handful of related amendments.
Reid rejected the offer because it would not allow him to call up a Democrat-endorsed amendment establishing an independent commission to evaluate the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. "Taking time to debate unrelated amendments, such as the establishment of a commission to investigate the national response to Hurricane Katrina, takes time away from other matters important to our military -- especially when such a measure was already debated and voted on by the Senate," Frist wrote.
On Monday, Reid publicly called on McCain to back the proposed commission, as the Arizona Republican had done with the commission created to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"They're willing to bring down the whole defense authorization vehicle," Reid said on the Senate floor. "They do not want an independent, bipartisan commission to take a look at what went wrong."
But McCain said Tuesday that an independent commission is not necessary unless the "frustration level" over the issue rises in Congress.