By Larry Jones
May 7, 2007

As promised, President George W. Bush vetoed a $124 billion war supplemental appropriations bill May 1, which included significantly more than what he requested for hurricane relief and funds to support U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq. In addition to the $103 billion requested by the President, Congress adopted and sent the President a final compromise that included an additional $21 billion. Approximately half of the increase would be for defense and security related programs and the other half would be for domestic programs, including many city priorities.

The bill includes an additional $2.5 billion for Homeland Security to improve security at high priority airports, and to improve port, transit and border security. It also includes $3.5 billion more than the President requested for hurricane relief efforts underway in New Orleans and other cities in the Gulf region. An additional $650 million was included for the State Children Health Insurance Program to ensure continued health care coverage for needy children in 14 states that face a budget shortfall in the program. The bill also includes an additional $400 million for the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program to partially restore cuts to the program.

Congressional leaders met with President Bush on May 2 to begin discussing a compromise that can be adopted by Congress and approved by the President. The President vetoed the war supplemental appropriations bill because it contained language that sets a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and because it contained the additional funds. It remains to be seen whether a compromise can be reached on a new bill that drops the troop withdrawal timetable but retains at least some of the additional funding added by Congressional leaders. Instead of including a timetable for withdrawal, Republican leaders are discussing building a new compromise around establishing benchmarks for the Iraq government to show progress in the war. But Democratic leaders are insisting on attaching consequences to any benchmarks, which so far do not have the support of Republicans.