|
Republicans raise debt limits to 9 trillion { March 17 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002870494_spending17.htmlhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002870494_spending17.html
Congress raises debt limit
By Andrew Taylor
The Associated Press
Friday, March 17, 2006 - Page updated at 01:08 AM
WASHINGTON — Congress raised the limit on the government's credit card to nearly $9 trillion Thursday, and lawmakers immediately went on a charge-it spree.
The House approved, 348-71, $92 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for relief along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.
Most of the House package, nearly $68 billion, would pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation would push total war costs since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly $400 billion.
Before the Iraq invasion in 2003, Bush administration officials predicted costs related to the Iraq war would total less than $100 billion.
The Senate, meanwhile, adopted a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint that anticipates deficits of more than $350 billion for this year and next. The spending blueprint, approved 51-49, little resembles President Bush's proposal last month for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.
To the disappointment of budget hawks, the Senate's measure would break Bush's proposed caps on spending for programs such as education, low-income heating subsidies and health research. All told, senators endorsed more than $16 billion in increases above Bush's proposed $873 billion cap on spending appropriated by Congress each year.
Vice President Dick Cheney was on hand for a possible tie-breaking vote, but that proved unnecessary.
Senators earlier voted 52-48 to send Bush a measure that would allow the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes. As a result, the government could pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes or cutting domestic programs. The statutory debt limit has risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.
Washington's senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both Democrats, voted against raising the limit.
The budget blueprint — which includes a new effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — advanced without Cheney's vote in the Republican-led Senate when Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu supported the plan after winning concessions to help her hurricane-damaged state of Louisiana.
She won inclusion of a proposal that could provide up to $2 billion a year for levee and coastal restoration projects; the money would come in part from potential oil-lease revenues from exploration in the Arctic refuge.
Cantwell and Murray voted against the budget blueprint.
Among the specifics of the budget blueprint:
• $3 billion more for heating subsidies for the poor.
• $7 billion more for education, health and worker safety accounts.
• $3.7 billion more for military personnel costs.
• $1.2 billion more for aviation security and stopping Bush's proposed increase in airline-ticket taxes.
The Senate votes set up a confrontation with the House, which is certain to oppose the additional spending.
On the House spending package, 19 Republicans, mostly fiscal conservatives, and 52 Democrats, including longtime war opponents, voted against the measure.
"Not one more dime for this administration's ill-conceived, ill-advised, misguided and failed Iraq policy," said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.
In the Washington delegation, Democrats Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee voted against the measure; Republican Cathy McMorris did not vote.
The $92 billion bill also contains $19.2 billion for cleaning up and rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Katrina struck last summer. That would bring total hurricane-related spending to more than $100 billion.
The bill also includes, in defiance of Bush, a provision that would block Dubai-owned Dubai Ports World from running or managing terminals at U.S. ports. That ban probably will not make it into the final bill now that the company has promised to sell its U.S. operations in the face of bipartisan congressional pressure.
Before the final vote, Republicans defeated a Democratic effort to add $1.2 billion for domestic security programs, including $825 million for protecting ports. Conservative Republicans, wanting to lessen the impact on the deficit, failed in an attempt to pay for the hurricane aid by cutting other programs in the budget.
Material from The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times is included in this report.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
|
|
