Skip to main content

Bush threatens spending bill veto

BBC logo

US President George Bush has threatened to veto an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Iraq because he says it has grown too expensive.

Senators have added amendments taking the total price tag to $106bn (£59bn).

The president says the bill must be cut down to size or he will refuse to sign it - something he has not done before.

The BBC's James Westhead in Washington says the threat is a sign of increased tension over spending priorities ahead of the November mid-term elections.

The Republicans' reputation for fiscal prudence has been damaged by a record budget deficit and new debt of $3 trillion since Mr Bush came to office.

Mr Bush's bill for emergency spending requests an additional $92bn - two-thirds for spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a third to help rebuilding in southern states after Hurricane Katrina last year.

Extra money

But senators are able to tack on additional spending provisions to such bills, and have done so. They have proposed extra spending worth a total of $14.5bn for border security, aid to farmers, measures to combat bird flu, and money to move a railway line.

"The final version of the legislation must remain focused on addressing urgent national priorities while maintaining fiscal discipline," a White House statement said.

"If the president is ultimately presented a bill that provides more than $92.2bn, exclusive of funding for the president's plan to address pandemic influenza, he will veto the bill."

Mr Bush has not vetoed a bill in more than five years as president, though in February he threatened to veto a law blocking a deal giving an Arab company control of six US ports. The company eventually ceded control of the ports to a US-owned entity.

Concern is growing among Republicans about their party's performance in the mid-term elections. According to a CNN poll, Mr Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low of 32%.

While some Republicans have supported the spending proposals, a growing lobby have condemned them, reports our correspondent.

"We are overweight and overspending," said Representative Tom Feeney, a Republican from Florida.

To date, Congress has provided about $315bn for the Iraq war and other anti-terror spending since September 2001.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

US says world safer, despite 11,000 attacks in '05

The U.S. war on terrorism has made the world safer, the State Department's counterterrorism chief said on Friday, despite more than 11,000 terrorist attacks worldwide last year that killed 14,600 people. The U.S. State Department said the numbers, listed in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism released on Friday, were based on a broader definition of terrorism and could not be compared to the 3,129 international attacks listed the previous year. But the new 2005 figures, which showed attacks in Iraq jumped and accounted for about a third of the world's total, may fuel criticism of the Bush administration's assertion that it is winning the fight against terrorism. Asked if the world was safer than the previous year, U.S. State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Henry Crumpton told a news conference, "I think so. But I think that (if) you look at the ups and downs of this battle, it's going to take us a long time to win this. You can't measure this month ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Al-Qaeda number two in new video

Al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has appeared in a video saying that Iraqi insurgents have "broken the back" of the US military. He praised "martyrdom operations" carried out by al-Qaeda in Iraq in the video, posted on an Islamist website. And he called on the people and army of Pakistan to fight against President Musharraf's administration. This is the third message from prominent al-Qaeda leaders to emerge within a week. A tape from Osama Bin Laden was broadcast on 23 April, followed two days later by a message from Iraqi insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Pakistan focus Zawahiri, who wore a black turban and a white robe in the video, described the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as traitors, and urged Muslims to "confront them". He praised Iraqi militants, saying that the US, Britain and allies had "achieved nothing but losses, disasters and misfortunes" in Iraq. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq alone has carried out 800 ma...
Post a Comment
Read more

Does light have mass?

The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes". Light is composed of photons so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely "no": The photon is a massless particle. According to theory it has energy and momentum but no mass and this is confirmed by experiment to within strict limits. Even before it was known that light is composed of photons it was known that light carries momentum and will exert a pressure on a surface. This is not evidence that it has mass since momentum can exist without mass. [ For details see the Physics FAQ article What is the mass of the photon? ]. Sometimes people like to say that the photon does have mass because a photon has energy E = hf where h is Planck's constant and f is the frequency of the photon. Energy, they say, is equivalent to mass according to Einstein's famous formula E = m...
6 comments
Read more