Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) wants Obama to make another attempt at a bipartisan deficit panel. | REUTERS War bill adds to looming debt fight

Past and present are converging in an Afghanistan war funding bill as the White House seeks to add billions to pay medical claims owed to veterans exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

The irony is hard to miss for this administration, already defensive about any link between its Afghan policy and the much bloodier U.S. involvement in Indochina that so damaged President Lyndon B. Johnson.


And with the wartime bill now approaching $55 billion, the higher costs make it a bigger target in Washington’s latest firefight over deficits and debt.

The new Agent Orange-related funding is striking in itself: $13.4 billion arising from a decision last October by Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to expand the number of illnesses presumed to be service connected for Vietnam veterans.

This presumption simplifies and speeds the application process for benefits, and the VA estimates that as many as 86,000 people will be affected.

President Barack Obama’s own war request begins with $33 billion for the Pentagon, plus an additional $4.5 billion for the State Department and international aid programs. The administration would use the same measure to replenish federal emergency disaster accounts with a further $3.6 billion appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security. When the VA funds are added, the total is $54.5 billion — a number that will almost certainly go higher given the expected addition of funding to assist Haiti.

Democrats aren’t likely to take up the measure before March, but the bill illustrates the almost relentless pressure on the administration in the face of a mounting federal debt.

That same debt issue will be front and center on the House floor Thursday, when Democrats hope to win final congressional approval of a record $1.9 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. It’s enough new borrowing authority to carry the Treasury through November’s elections and into next spring. And as part of the same deal, fiscal moderates will get new statutory “pay-go” requirements to try to rein in future spending and tax cuts.

Republicans have stayed largely aloof, happy to bleed Democrats politically on the painful debt vote. But since Monday’s release of Obama’s budget — showing $5 trillion in deficits through 2014 — some in the Senate have been casting about for how to re-engage on the issue.

This may be a matter of buyer’s remorse: Republican defections helped kill efforts last week to create a bipartisan task force empowered to force deficit reduction votes after the elections this year. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the party’s conference and a proponent of the commission opposed by others in the leadership, wants Obama to make a second try to pull the two sides together.

The president has said that, instead, he will create a commission himself by executive order. But both Alexander and New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, argue that this could be futile without a vote blessing the enterprise.

“It’s a much better use of his time to try to improve the statutory commission than to go through this gesture of a bipartisan commission,” Alexander told POLITICO. “The executive order, however well-intentioned, I’m just afraid will be a waste of time.”

Sixteen Republicans did back the proposal on the initial vote last week, and a 17th, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, was absent. “If he can’t pass something that’s very important with 17 Republican votes, it’s going to be a long four years,” Alexander said. And since the newest Republican, Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown, will be sworn in Thursday and has endorsed the commission, proponents need only five votes — a handful of switches in both parties — to go over the top.

House Democrats — never very keen on the commission — will be reluctant to go along. But the path mapped out by the president’s budget has its own perils for the majority.

Much rests on the credibility of the president’s three-year freeze on discretionary domestic appropriations for about 20 Cabinet departments and agencies with spending of $446.3 billion this year.

The whole notion of a freeze is to convey a symbolic discipline, but the administration risks undercutting its message by rearranging the numbers to suit its agenda.

A case in point is the treatment of Pell grants for low-income college students. These have long been subject to annual appropriations, but the White House wants to treat the program as a mandated benefit available to those who qualify — and therefore outside its freeze on discretionary spending.

“We’re not hiding the ball. We’re just making a policy proposal,” said one administration official. But critics would argue that this knocks a $10 billion hole in the promised “freeze.” Moreover, the whole starting point for the freeze is somewhat suspect, in that it includes $6 billion for the census that won’t be needed past this year.

Mindful of this, the White House would argue that it does drop down spending from $446.3 billion in 2010 to $441.3 billion in 2011. But the same “census cushion” is back again a year later when the “frozen” accounts top $446 billion.