Funding more than war

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Nearly half of the $21 billion that House Democrats added to President Bush's request for emergency war funding would go to nonmilitary spending and to pork projects.

The supplemental spending bill includes more than $3.7 billion in farm subsidies, $2.9 billion in additional Gulf Coast hurricane relief and $2.4 billion for social programs such as money for rural Northwest school districts, health insurance for poor children, energy assistance for poor families and others.

Mr. Bush yesterday called on Congress to pass legislation that funds the troops without extraneous spending provisions or requirements for an early withdrawal from Iraq.

"They have a responsibility to pass a clean bill that does not use funding for our troops as leverage to get special-interest spending for their districts," said Mr. Bush, whose initial request funded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as about $3.4 billion in hurricane relief.

"They have a responsibility to get this bill to my desk without strings and without delay."

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, said nonmilitary items in the emergency spending bill address vital needs that the previous Republican-led Congress neglected and that can't go unfunded until the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

"We are responding to needs that last Republican majority ignored, such as funding for children's health care that was requested by Republican and Democratic governors," Hoyer spokeswoman Stacey Bernards said.

Emergency spending bills historically are a magnet for pork projects, but critics of the war supplemental say the new Democratic majority has broken their vow to restore fiscal restraint to Washington.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said Democratic leaders were trying to "wrap pork in Old Glory."

"To call some of the stuff in this bill an emergency must have Webster spinning in his grave," Mr. Hensarling said. "The real emergency Democrats must have is the emergency of selling votes to get this thing passed."