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US Congress negotiators clear $87 billion for Iraq
Khaleej Times, (Reuters)
30 October 2003
WASHINGTON - Congressional negotiators on Wednesday approved $87.5 billion legislation to support US troops and reconstruction in Iraq, clearing the measure for final passage and bringing President George W. Bush closer to a landmark legislative win in Iraq.
Negotiators from the Senate and House of Representatives agreed to the final bill after backing Bush and killing a plan to require Iraq to repay half of the measure’s nearly $20 billion for its reconstruction.
The White House had threatened to veto the entire bill if Congress did not agree to give Iraq the reconstruction aid, rather than go along with a Senate-passed plan that would have turned half of it into loans.
The bill also has nearly $65 billion to keep US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The House of Representatives may vote on the bill’s final passage as early as on Thursday with the Senate to follow.
Both chambers are expected to pass it easily, despite broad support among lawmakers to make Iraq use its potential oil wealth to repay part of the reconstruction money.
The final legislation then would be sent to Bush, who argued that seeking repayment would burden Iraq with more debt, slow efforts to stabilize the country and prolong the US occupation.
Republicans who backed loans said they would support the final bill even if the repayment provision was eliminated because they did not want to hold up money for US troops.
But some Republicans gave the White House notice that their vote for the Iraq package came at a political cost, and criticized it for high-handed treatment of Congress.
“You bump up to a degree of arrogance over and over,” said Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican. “Pride goeth before the fall,” he said.
Intense White House pressure
Throughout the Iraq debate, a number of Republicans chafed at being called on to give Iraq $20 billion to rebuild its infrastructure despite its huge potential oil revenues, rising US deficits and domestic needs.
Under intense White House pressure, two Senate Republicans who said they would push for loans -- Sam Brownback of Kansas and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado -- backed down to give Bush the win. One Democrat, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, also voted against loans.
The measure was not in the House bill, so the repayment provision was eliminated from the final bill.
The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, appearing on Capitol Hill, said, “We’ll put that money, that American taxpayers’ money, to good work in finishing the job of reconstructing Iraq.”
The final bill shaved Bush’s $20.3 billion request for Iraq’s reconstruction to $18.6 billion, and boosted aid to Liberia, Sudan and Jordan.
It also called for an office of the inspector general to oversee accounts of the US provisional authority in Iraq to keep track of the huge cash flow as lawmakers noted a troubling potential for corruption.
With National Guard and Reserve units being pressed into extended service, negotiators also agreed to expand access to US military insurance for these members who are unemployed or whose employers do not offer health insurance.
The bill makes all members of these units eligible to enroll for the insurance when they receive activation orders instead of when they are actually activated, and lets them stay on the insurance for six months after deployment.
Lawmakers also added $500 million to the emergency spending package for domestic disaster relief partly in response to the devastating wildfires in California.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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