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Thursday, May 22, 2008
War Supplemental Update: Senate Approves Spending Amendments
...lobbing it back over to the House
The Senate has approved an amendment to the war supplemental spending bill (HR 2642) that would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of Bush's presidency. The $165 billion spending measure was adopted 70-26.
And by a vote of 75-22, the Senate also adopted an amendment that would appropriate a bevy of domestic spending provisions including a $52 billion expansion of the GI bill, an $11 billion extension of unemployment insurance benefits, and $10 billion for Gulf Coast reconstruction. The amendment would also delay the implementation of a set of Medicaid rules designed to reduce federal spending on the health care program.
The bill now heads over to the House, which failed to add war funding to the measure when it voted on the bill last week. The House did, however, add a war policy amendment, which the Senate stripped from the bill. The House also added its own set of domestic spending, with some differences, the most significant of which is the House's $54 billion offset to the GI bill expansion.
Posted by Craig Jennings
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