The House voted Wednesday to close a multibillion-dollar loophole in a crackdown on contract fraud, approving plans to force the Bush administration to act within six months.

The House voice vote was followed hours later with similar legislation filed by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. It's not clear when the Senate might vote on the plan, McCaskill spokeswoman Adrianne Marsh said Wednesday night.

At issue is a Bush administration rule requiring government contractors to report misuse of taxpayer dollars to the Justice Department. The rule, as originally published last November, included a loophole to exempt contracts performed overseas.

More than $102 billion has been spent on government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan alone in the last five years. The loophole was first reported by The Associated Press.

Administration officials told lawmakers at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing earlier this month that the loophole was a "drafting error" and likely would be removed.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., requires the Bush administration to eliminate the exemption within 180 days.

"I don't totally trust the administration to get it right and I'm skeptical of their explanation that this was quote, a mistake," Welch said Wednesday. "Words don't mysteriously appear on their own. So the statute gives us assurance that it'll happen."

The administration since has stripped the loophole from the proposed rule, which likely will be finalized later this year. At the House hearing, a top official for the White House Office of Management and Budget predicted the exemption would not be included in the final rule.

The Justice Department said has charged at least 46 people in investigations over the past several years into kickbacks, bribes and other abuses of government-funded contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. It opposed the loophole.

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