Senate Panel Moves to Shift Costs of War to Iraq

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the House also is likely to include language that would shift some financial responsibilities to the Iraqi government.

"They have a surplus and we have a deficit," she said. "They have a windfall from the price of oil, and that price of oil is hurting our economy. We've spent a fortune on infrastructure in Iraq when we have deficits in infrastructure in our country."

Congress's actions reflect the convergence of soaring gasoline prices, an ailing economy, rising political pressure and weariness of a war that took the lives of 48 more U.S. troops last month. Democrats on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress chided Bush on the fifth anniversary of his speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in which he declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

"Five years after George Bush declared 'mission accomplished' and John McCain told the American people that 'the end is very much in sight' in Iraq, we have lost thousands of lives, spent half a trillion dollars, and we're no safer," said Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

Congressional leadership aides freely admitted yesterday that efforts in the coming weeks to demand a timeline for ending the war are again going to fail. But the twin pressure of oil prices and economic worries will propel changes in funding, they said.

Senators said they had negotiated the provisions with Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the White House war coordinator, who pushed hard for a waiver that would allow funding of individual projects critical to Iraqi national security. But Collins refused to go along. Fratto declined yesterday to say whether the final language would prompt a veto.

Democratic leaders are taking a pragmatic approach to the war funding fight, but conflicts within Democratic ranks continue to delay the measure, which was supposed to come up in the House next week but is likely to be postponed again, possibly beyond Memorial Day.

Antiwar Democrats oppose efforts to add domestic spending measures to the bill because they would have to vote against them to oppose more war funding. But other Democrats want more domestic spending because they see the war bill as perhaps the only spending measure that will pass before the next president takes office.

Pelosi threw support yesterday behind a significant expansion of veterans' education benefits that would cover the cost of the most expensive state university. Unemployment benefits also are expected to be included, as are domestic programs that Bush has requested, such as funding for the 2010 Census and for federal prisons.

The House is likely to attach separate policy measures, including a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and a government-wide prohibition on torture.

Similar measures will be offered in the Senate, but Democrats said yesterday that they expect them to fall to Republican filibusters. Instead, they are looking toward more incremental changes.

The Armed Services bill includes prohibitions on U.S.-government contractors serving as security guards in combat zones or conducting interrogations, direct results of scandals that arose from the actions of contractors such as Blackwater Worldwide. It also would require contractors in war zones to report alleged rapes and sexual assaults. In more than two dozen cases, alleged assaults on female contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been prosecuted.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.