Bush to submit tsunami, Iraq supplementals early next month

The White House is expected to submit separate supplemental requests for tsunami aid and for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, likely in the week after President Bush submits his fiscal 2006 budget Feb. 7, sources said.

With new House and Senate Appropriations Committee chairmen eager to get to work, pressure has been mounting on the administration to speed up its schedule. Lawmakers and aides have argued to White House officials that combining the two packages -- given the broader bipartisan appeal of tsunami aid -- might hasten what is expected to be a drawn-out debate over the much larger Iraq supplemental, estimated to reach more than $80 billion. Delaying the larger package into March to further assess conditions in Iraq is apparently no longer an option, aides said.

In an interview Tuesday with CongressDaily, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., said he would prefer that the administration combine the measures into one package, and soon.

"If you have a supplemental request, you submit it all together and send it up to the Congress," Cochran said. "The sooner they have figured out what they do need, send it to us and let us get to work -- those are in the nature of emergency needs, it seems to me."

With the Pentagon spending close to $5 million a day on the tsunami relief effort -- on top of the $350 million already pledged for U.S. Agency for International Development activities -- aides estimate the military component could bring the tsunami bill to more than $1 billion. Cochran said he expects lively debate on the supplemental requests.

"There may be a tendency of some to increase the tsunami relief effort no matter what the request is and to reduce the amount for the Iraqi war effort no matter what the request is," Cochran said.

Cochran and House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., met late last week to begin discussions on the fiscal 2006 appropriations process and a timeline for moving supplemental funds. Cochran said he, like Lewis, would maintain a brisk pace on the fiscal 2006 spending bills to avoid a year-end omnibus bill.

"It's my plan to have us stay on a schedule that will cause us to pass 13 individual appropriations bills," Cochran said.

Complicating matters could be the subject of restructuring the Appropriations committees, which Cochran said he and Lewis have not discussed. Lewis and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, have said Appropriations subcommittees might be rearranged and perhaps one or more eliminated, a feeling not necessarily shared in the Senate.

"I think there are always ways to improve and modernize the way Congress conducts business, and I'll be open to suggestions that others may make," Cochran said, but he added, "I don't know that we're going to have that many changes really in the subcommittee structure in the Senate."

He suggested the Senate might not follow the House's lead, which would complicate conference negotiations. But he noted that different House and Senate authorizing committees often meet to reconcile legislation, so it would not be without precedent.