[StBernard] (no subject)

[Westley Annis]

Negotiators meet on Iraq, hurricane relief funding bill
6/6/2006, 9:05 p.m. CT
By ANDREW TAYLOR 
The Associated Press    

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress is pressing hard to deliver a $94.5 billion
measure this week to President Bush to finance the war in Iraq and provide
more hurricane relief to Gulf Coast states.

The bill has been almost four months in the making and was cut substantially
at a House-Senate negotiating session Tuesday night, when top negotiators
unveiled a bill reduced by more than $14 billion since emerging from the
Senate last month at $109 billion.

The GOP-driven negotiation hewed to a White House demand that the emergency
bill be kept to his original $92.2 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan
and hurricanes and an additional $2.3 billion to combat bird flu.

The freewheeling negotiating session convened with the purpose of reaching a
deal and getting a bill to the House floor by Friday. Otherwise, a Pentagon
money crunch would worsen, threatening military operations and training
accounts, and the Army in particular is being forced already to curtail some
services and shift money to maintain its war operations.

The House back in March passed a bill sticking with Bush's request, but the
Senate added billions for farm disasters, fisheries aid, veterans medical
care and port security and to compensate Texas for taking on evacuees of
Katrina. Most of those moneys were dropped, including $4 billion in
agriculture disaster assistance to farmers to help them deal with high fuel
prices and damage from floods and droughts last year.

But House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., and Senate
counterpart Thad Cochran, R-Miss., did manage to skirt the veto threat by
capping Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds at levels that
could require Congress to pass more money for FEMA this fall.

Cochran successfully pressed for an extra $1 billion in community
development block grants in addition to the $4.2 billion requested by Bush
to provide housing aid to Louisiana, which felt shortchanged by previous aid
bills. But agreement remained elusive on how to distribute that money among
Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

The underlying bill contains $65.7 billion in Pentagon funds for Iraq and
Afghanistan, including funding for military operations and maintenance,
weapons procurement, personnel and an initiative to locate and disarm
roadside bombs. The bill also contains funding for controversial V-22 Osprey
tilt-rotor aircraft and C-130 cargo planes.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are burning $8 billion a month, said Sen.
Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., a severe critic of the Iraq war. Total spending for
those wars has hit $318 billion, he said.

The bill also contains $2.3 billion in foreign aid for Iraq, to combat
famine in Africa and Afghanistan and support U.N. peacekeeping missions in
Sudan, among other purposes.

Lewis said the bill contains an additional $19.2 billion for hurricane
relief and reconstruction, including new and rebuilt flood control projects
for New Orleans, housing aid for Louisiana and for replenishing FEMA's
Disaster Relief Fund by $6 billion.

Cochran, though, abandoned a bid to devote $700 million to compensating CSX
Transportation for its Gulf Coast freight line. The state wants to tear up
the line - recently repaired with almost $300 million in insurance money -
and use the land for a new East-West highway to help develop the devastated
region.

But Cochran fought fiercely to retain a provision to give Northrop Grumman
Corp., owner of the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., perhaps $140
million to $200 million in compensation for business disruption caused by
Hurricane Katrina.

Northrop Gruman has insurance coverage for the business losses and is
currently in litigation. The Pentagon says the company's insurers shouldn't
be let off the hook.

Cochran said it would cost taxpayers more in the end because without the
money for Ingalls, shipbuilding costs would go up far more than the
compensation for the company.