The Senate Appropriations Committee has sharply increased the $19.2 billion that the House approved in March for continued rebuilding along the Gulf Coast from last year’s hurricanes. The Senate panel on April 4 cleared a supplemental spending bill that includes $27 billion for disaster relief, much of it for housing, levee repairs, agriculture and other needs in Louisiana and other Gulf states.

The committee started with a $96.7-billion supplemental package, of which $72.2 billion was for the war in Iraq and other military programs and $24.4 billion for disaster relief. Appropriators then approved several amendments that added about $12 billion. About $3 billion of the new money is for Gulf Coast relief. The House bill totaled $92 billion, including $19 billion for disaster relief.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D), who attended the Senate panel’s voting session, said it was “fun to be on the receiving end ” of much of the additional funding. “We hope we can hold on to the vast majority of it,” she says, when Senate and House conferees meet to work out differences.

The Senate panel’s bill includes $5.2 billion in block grants for Gulf housing, up $1 billion from the House number. It also provides about $2.1 billion to rebuild levees and for other flood control projects around New Orleans, up $624 million from the House level. “It’s not a lot [more], but every little bit helps,” said Blanco. “You want to inch in as close as you can to the real numbers.”

Those “real numbers” for levee work have jumped by about $6 billion, Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding Donald E. Powell recently told local officials “That kind of took us all aback,” says Blanco. The panel did include language proposed by Mary Landrieu (D-La.), that she says notifies the Bush administration that appropriators expect a follow-up spending request in light of new levee estimates.

When the bill hits the Senate floor, Landrieu says she will seek to add $387 million to close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. She says the funds would pay for relocating businesses and building new facilities.