The bill before the Senate would add more than $28 billion to Bush's budget request for this year and next, with almost $50 billion more after those two years for a big expansion of veterans benefits under the GI Bill from 2010-2018.

Reid faces enormous procedural headaches in getting the war funding bill - and its various add-ons - passed this week. Democrats have divided the war funding bill into two components: non-war add-ons and Iraq funding-policy restrictions. Reid has signaled he wants the non-war extras to get a vote before the war funding itself, but it's a high-wire strategy.

The new GI Bill and Democratic priorities like extending unemployment benefits are among the big-ticket add-ons, both of which have drawn veto threats. There's also $50 million to track down child predators, $400 million to help rural schools and $350 million to fight Western wildfires, just for starters.

The immigrant farm labor provision added to the measure at a hearing last week by Sens Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, would allow almost 1.4 million immigrant farm workers to stay in the United States for up to five years to ease a shortage of farm workers that has left some crops rotting in the fields.

It's the type of situation White House budget director Jim Nussle had in mind last month when he chided senators for a "sky-is-the-limit mind-set" regarding "the desire of some in Congress to load up this troop funding bill with tens of billions in additional spending."