House panel approves $91 billion emergency spending bill

[Clara T]

House panel approves $91 billion emergency spending bill

By Rick Maze
Times staff writer

The House Appropriations Committee approved a $91 billion emergency spending bill late Wednesday that covers wartime and natural disaster costs and includes extra money for the Army and Marine Corps, who have complained about being shortchanged by the White House. It also includes trouble for President Bush.

The bill goes to the House floor next week. Lawmakers also found a way to provide extra money to the Department of Veterans Affairs for health care costs related to the war. They agreed to a bipartisan amendment — pushed by Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Tex. — that allows $275 million set aside to replace the New Orleans VA hospital destroyed by Hurricane Katrina to be used for health care expenses if it isn’t spent on hospital construction or design.

By a 62-2 vote, the committee added language to the supplemental that prohibits the Bush administration from going ahead with a deal to turn over control of some U.S. ports to a United Arab Emirates company, Dubai Ports World. Bush has threatened to veto any bill containing such language.

Pentagon comptroller Tina Jonas told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the Defense Department needed the supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan operations — $67.5 billion of the House committee bill — by no later than April 30 to avoid disrupting peacetime programs to pay for war-related costs. Meeting that deadline already was going to be difficult because the Senate Appropriations Committee doesn’t plan to start writing its version of the bill until the last week of March, leaving one month for full Senate passage and for a compromise.

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1586761.php