On May 21, 1999, the President signed a supplemental appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999 (P.L. 106-31). “Emergency supplemental appropriations” are made when the federal government needs money, beyond that provided in the normal appropriations process, to respond to a crisis.

Congress originally took up an emergency supplemental bill for 1999 to reimburse emergency accounts and appropriate new funds to respond to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Georges in the Caribbean and Hurricane Mitch in Central America. When finally approved by Congress, the "supplemental" had grown to include a package of unrelated funding initiatives, ranging from Community Block Grants to the war in Kosovo to Interior Department programs.

The following sections of the Emergency Supplemental included funding for U.S. defense-related programs in Latin America.

• Title I, Chapter 3:
  • $37,500,000 to replenish the Defense Department’s Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster, and Civic Aid (OHDACA) account. This account had been depleted by the U.S. military response to Hurricane Mitch; and
  • $46,000,000 for “New Horizons” Humanitarian Civic Assistance (HCA) military exercises, “to undertake relief, rehabilitation, and restoration operations and training activities in response to disasters within the United States Southern Command area of responsibility.”
• Title I, Chapter 4: $2,000,000 to the Disaster Recovery Fund, “to support the clearance of landmines and other unexploded ordnance in Nicaragua and Honduras. This funding is channeled through the State Department’s Agency for International Development.
• Title III, Chapter 7:
  • $6,400,000 to the Army National Guard account for Military Construction, “to cover the incremental costs arising from the consequences of Hurricane Georges;” and
  • $25,000,000 to the Army’s Family Housing account to “provide for the construction and renovation of family housing units at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico.”