Senior House Republicans proposed slicing $1.7 billion out of President Bush's $20.3 billion Iraqi reconstruction request last week, moving to eliminate such political hot potatoes as $50,000 garbage trucks, new ZIP codes and phone numbers, and the $100 million restoration of the drained marshes of southern Iraq.

The proposed cuts are contained in a new version of the president's $87 billion war and reconstruction request for Iraq and Afghanistan that House Appropriations Committee Republicans circulated Monday.

Rep. Bill Young. R-Fla., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of its foreign operations subcommittee, asked their staffs to work through the weekend, paring Bush's request to make it more palatable to fiscal conservatives angered by what they saw as an overly generous rebuilding effort.
Such anger has fueled a drive to convert much, if not all, of the aid into loans, to be repaid with Iraqi oil revenue. Bush opposes the idea.

Young's proposal would eliminate several of the items most derided by Democrats, including $9 million to establish ZIP codes, $4 million to update Iraq's phone numbers, $10 million to upgrade the business practices of Iraq's television and radio industry, and $20 million for a monthlong "catch-up" business course, at $10,000 a pupil. The Republican bill would cut $100 million designated to build seven new communities in Iraq, complete with 3,528 houses, as well as roads, three schools, a clinic, a place of worship and a market for each.

Kolbe said such projects should be handled by international lending organizations such as the World Bank.

The request for $400 million to build two 4,000-bed maximum-security prisons at $50,000 a bed would be pared back to one medium-security prison for $100 million. The House bill would also eliminate the $150 million request to build a state-of-the-art children's hospital in Basra.

White House officials vowed to fight the proposed cuts.