Highlights of Iraq Spending Bill Add-Ons

[Robbien]

<snip>

President Bush's 2007 request:

-$93.4 billion for Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-$6 billion for State Department diplomatic and foreign aid in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-$3.4 billion for housing assistance and infrastructure improvements associated with Hurricane Katrina.

-$200 million for other agencies.

Potential congressional add-ons to the bill:

-$4 billion in drought relief for farmers in the Great Plains.

-$3.1 billion for military base construction and closings.

-$1.3 billion for New Orleans levee improvements.

-$1.2 billion in relief, unemployment, food and housing aid arising out of a freeze that destroyed citrus, avocado and other crops in California's Central Valley.

-$745 million to deal with a shortfall in the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 14 states.

-$400 million for a one-year extension of payments to rural counties in the Pacific Northwest to make up for timbering cutbacks in national forests.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6447608,00.html

Paying people almost a half billion of our tax dollars not to cut down and sell the trees in our public forests. Sad.

[Bruce McAuley]

1. Naw, that's the payoff to poor counties like ours...

We lost our timber mill in 2002, mainly due to Canada subsidizing their softwood industry and selling cheaper lumber here than we could produce.
The mills in our poor counties in Eastern Washington all dried up and blew away, the one here is finally cleaned up, nothing left but the concrete floors and roads.
Anyway, it's kinda late now, the workers have all either gone or been retrained into health care or something similar, but if they're going to give poor old Ferry County some money, we sure could use some since we have the poorest county in Washington State.
I'd actually be surprised to see it trickle down here. But it's money better spent than sending it to Iraq, I think.

Bruce