Rice Questioned About Supplemental Funding Requests

The really interesting bit here are the items in the other funding requests mentioned in the last paragraph of this excerpt.

Skeptical lawmakers yesterday demanded a detailed accounting of how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to spend $6 billion in supplemental funds that the administration has asked for the State Department this year, much of it for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I think you've got a lot of explaining to do," Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) told Rice at a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on state and foreign operations. "A huge majority of the funds in the supplemental are for military, not political or economic or reconstructive, purposes."

Both Republicans and Democrats asked pointed questions about the rising cost of efforts that seem to be failing, despite newly announced U.S. strategies for both countries. Even as the administration has asked for more money, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) told Rice, it ought to increase its diplomatic engagement with Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East.

"I plead with you, I beg of you," Wolf said, "if we're going to ask a young man or woman in our military to go to Iraq three different times, it's not asking too much . . . to send somebody to engage with regard to the Syrians." ...

Panel members sharply questioned both the supplemental budget and the other funding requests, including a planned $250 million cash payment to the government of Lebanon, $86 million requested for security assistance for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and more than $500 million being spent for a new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.