The struggle between Congress and the White House over the $120 billion supplemental war funding bill ended last week when, on May 24, Congress sent President Bush a version of the bill that he signed into law. The final bill (H.R. 2206) — the largest supplemental spending bill in the history of the United States — also raises the minimum wage for the first time in over ten years, a fact that seems to have been lost in national news coverage. Bush vetoed Congress' first supplemental bill on May 1 because the legislation included a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq. Democrats in Congress removed those timetables and did not include any language about redeployment of soldiers out of Iraq, but did provide benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet. The supplemental, which provides funding for four months, specifies 18 political and legislative benchmarks applying theoretically to the Iraqi government. President Bush is also required to issue periodic reports on Iraq's progress, starting in late July. If the Iraqis fall short, they could forfeit U.S. reconstruction aid, though the president is free to waive any consequences the Iraqis might face. Despite the final compromise with the president over the bill, 63 percent of Americans believe that U.S. soldiers should leave Iraq by the end of 2008, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published May 25. And many key legislators in Congress were also less than pleased, including Appropriations chair David Obey (D-WI), the mastermind behind the compromise. Obey said: I hate this agreement. I'm going to vote against it even though I negotiated it…. But I take some comfort in the knowledge that even Babe Ruth struck out more than 1,300 times. After the House vote on the bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who voted against the measure, sought to assure antiwar Americans, saying the debate over the war will continue. Pelosi was referring to the upcoming defense appropriations and authorization bills as well as other legislation that Congress will consider throughout the rest of 2007. The Senate vote was 80-14. Unlike the House, where 140 Democrats opposed the measure and 86 supported it, Senate Democrats supported the bill 36-10. An exception was Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who said, "This vote is a choice between validating the same failed policy in Iraq that has cost us so many lives and demanding a new one. And I am demanding a new one." The bill provides the full complement of the war funding the president says is needed for the rest of Fiscal Year 2007. Most of the funding, just under $100 billion, goes toward continued military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; non-military spending is spread among:

• Gulf Coast hurricane recovery ($6.4 billion)
• emergency aid to farmers ($3 billion)
• conversion of closing U.S. military bases ($3 billion)
• drought and natural disaster relief ($1 billion)
• improvements to mass-transit and port security ($1 billion)
• emergency road repairs ($0.9 billion)
• children's health care ($0.6 billion)

Additional domestic spending items cover state HIV grant programs, mine safety research, youth violence prevention activities, and pandemic flu protection. Less noticed, with all the attention focused on the war, is the bill's federal minimum wage package, which phases in an increase to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 over two years, accompanied by a $4.8 billion package of business tax cuts that are fully offset. Congress had not changed the minimum wage in a decade, the longest such stretch since a federal minimum was established in 1938. Yet the provision was so low-profile in the debate on the supplemental that even longtime champion of the increase, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), voted against the bill. While the supplemental funding debate has ended, there is little doubt the issue of removing American soldiers from Iraq and the general course of the war will be taken up again in Congress with the FY 2008 defense authorization and appropriations bills to be debated this summer.