With President Bush discussing Iraq’s future with close advisers at Camp David yesterday, the Senate this week is expected to pass a $517 billion defense budget for 2007 and possibly tack on a further $94.5 billion in emergency spending for this year.

Though Mr. Bush had threatened to veto any supplemental measure that exceeded the original $94 billion, Senate officials said all signals from the White House indicated that he would sign the bill, largely because “it’s what the president asked for,” according to a staffer in the leadership office who asked not to be named. A White House spokesman confirmed the president’s intention of agreeing to the additional spending.

The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, hailed the extra $94.5 billion earmarked for unforeseen budget emergencies while insisting that Congress was finally cracking down on excessive Washington spending.

“This supplemental spending bill proves that we’re on the right track,” Dr. Frist said in a statement. “It focuses resources on important priorities. It provides funding to bolster border security, conduct the War on Terror, aid hurricane recovery, and improve our nation’s preparedness against the threat of avian flu – all while exercising fiscal restraint and responsibility.”

But Democrats were preparing to attack the proposal on two counts: that the Government Accounting Office found last year that the Pentagon does not have clear knowledge of Middle East military operations, which limited Congress’s ability to supervise increasing spending; and a Congressional Budget Office report that since 2001 supplemental appropriation spending has amounted to $577 billion – an average of $96 billion a year.

Critics of Mr. Bush’s administration, including some fiscal conservatives, point to the tax cuts the president championed and the escalating cost of the Iraqi war as the main reasons for the record budget deficit.

“The administration continues to operate from the pretense that the cost of this ongoing war is unknowable and thus requires emergency spending,” Senator Murray, a Democrat of Washington, said in a statement. “It is disingenuous to continue to ask for ’emergency’ spending to pay for military action that has been ongoing for years.”

Last year, Mr. Bush approved $160 billion in emergency spending, largely for Hurricane Katrina relief, and the year before $118 billion was granted beyond the planned budget. Supplemental spending from fiscal years 1995 to 2000 came to a total of $21 billion, or an average of $4 billion a year, according to the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.

Congress has already allocated $900 billion this year and tucked in a further $50 billion into the 2006 defense appropriation bill.

Despite the partisan bickering, however, Senators on both sides of the aisle agree they need to provide the extra money to ensure the future of Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, urged Dr. Frist in a letter to focus “on critical national security issues during the June legislative session, including the Defense Authorization bill which authorizes funding for our troops and their families, essential training and equipment, and policy guidance on virtually every major issue impacting the Armed Forces.”

“At a time of war, delaying consideration of this bill for other less important issues as occurred last year is simply inexcusable,” he said.

Though a $517 billion defense budget seems an enormous sum, America is not breaking a record or the bank, according to James Dunnigan, an author and expert on military spending.

When considering military spending as a percentage of Gross National Product, the figure keeps falling, as it has since the 1960s, when the Vietnam War cost America nearly 11% of its GNP, he said. Even though the country faces an extended war on terrorism, Mr. Dunnigan has found that because of the growing economy, defense spending today averages just 3.4% of GNP, with most going to pay and benefits of personnel and new equipment.

In addition to the $65.8 billion for military pay and body armor, and $19.8 billion for hurricane recovery efforts, the joint House-Senate supplemental bill provides $4 billion for foreign assistance programs, including $405 million for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid in Darfur, Sudan, and $2.3 billion for avian flu preparedness.

Legislators reached an agreement in principle on the size of the budget in a late-night session last week after Senate conferees agreed to drop what some House negotiators considered extraordinary provisions. Those were $700 million to relocate a railroad along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and $1.2 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster fund, which gives aid to disaster victims and covers debris removal.

Both Houses are expected to vote on the supplemental budget again before it reaches Mr. Bush’s desk some time this week.