U.S. House Passes Iraq Funds Bill Bush Would Veto

The U.S. House of Representatives passed on Thursday an Iraq war funds bill that President George W. Bush has promised to veto.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed on Thursday an Iraq war funds bill that President George W. Bush has promised to veto because it only provides enough money to continue combat for the next two or three months without a guarantee of future funding.

By a vote of 221-205, the House approved the Democratic-backed bill that would give Bush $42.8 billion in emergency military funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and related activities.

An additional $52.8 billion would have to be approved by Congress in late July, after Bush submits progress reports on the war. Lawmakers would then decide whether to use this second batch of money to continue combat or to bring most U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Bush wants the nearly $100 billion up front to fund the wars and without conditions for future votes on troop withdrawals.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin said he and fellow Democrats had made several key concessions to Bush, including dropping earlier provisions setting firm dates for leaving Iraq.

But Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, the senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, countered that Democrats' reluctance to fully fund the troops "clearly calls into question its commitment to men and women in uniform."

The Senate is working on a somewhat different bill that might provide the $100 billion in war funds at once, as the Bush administration has requested.

Bush said on Thursday he could go along with including "benchmarks" for measuring progress in Iraq. But he has not said he would support tying those benchmarks to future funding, as the House bill provides. That issue has been a subject of negotiations between the White House and Congress.