http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070201/pl_nm/iraq_bush_budget_dc Bush to request hefty Iraq war funds By Caren Bohan and Richard Cowan Thu Feb 1, 6:40 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will request slightly more than $100 billion to cover war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of this year and an even larger amount for fiscal 2008 that begins on October 1, congressional sources said on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT The administration, which will submit the war cost proposals along with its annual budget on Monday, will provide details of its war spending plans to try to placate critics who have accused it of using a shadow budget to fund the war. For the current fiscal year, the White House will ask Congress to approve an additional $93 billion for the Defense Department to conduct the two wars and about $7 billion for State Department activities, a Senate aide said. Including other items, the request will total "a little over $100 billion," according to the Senate aide. That would come on top of $70 billion Congress already approved for the wars this year. For 2008, the administration will ask for an amount "larger than the $100 billion in the fiscal 2007 request," the Senate aide said. House and Senate aides said the administration was trying to detail the 2008 costs in advance, responding to complaints from Congress about the long line of "emergency" spending bills that have mostly funded the Iraq war since the U.S. invasion in 2003. BIGGEST SO FAR At about $100 billion, the fiscal 2007 emergency request would be the biggest so far. The Congressional Budget Office estimated Bush's planned troop buildup could cost at least double the administration's initial estimate and involve more than twice the number of troops. The price tag could reach about $13 billion for a four-month mission, the nonpartisan CBO said. The roughly 20,000 combat soldiers Bush said he was going to deploy to Iraq might have to be augmented by 28,000 support troops, it said. A U.S. defense official said the Pentagon did not believe the CBO's figure for support troops was realistic. "Our estimate is that it would be far less than their worst-case scenario," commented the official, who said he would not comment on the record or offer an alternative figure as military planners were still working on their estimates. In January, the Bush administration estimated a cost of $5.6 billion to dispatch 21,500 troops. A Bush administration official said details of both years' war spending proposals would be provided in the budget book outlining the 2008 spending plans. It also will include a forecast for war spending in fiscal 2009 but not beyond that. "That's about as far out as you can realistically project," the official said. In a letter to Bush in December, three lawmakers said the use of emergency bills had created an "ever-expanding shadow budget" that was obscuring Congress's oversight process and skewing budget deficit projections. It was signed by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record) of North Dakota and House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina, both Democrats, and New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg (news, bio, voting record), senior Budget Committee Republican. Administration officials say they do not object to greater transparency but are using emergency bills to avoid having the costs viewed as part of the Pentagon's permanent budget. If such costs were incorporated into the main Pentagon budget, it would be politically difficult to scale them back when it is time to do so. But the Bush administration hopes plenty of details on the spending plans will satisfy congressional demands. "We're going to try to be much more transparent on the costs of the war," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. ______________________________________ I am not about to screw over our economy and give the next administration a chance to tax us to death just because the current president is afraid of admitting a mistake and leaving his term with the cloud of failure.
Great...$100 billion dollars for war. What a waste of money. And, we will have gained nothing except a stalemate.
Can you imagine how much that would solve our probelms with the gorwing hotbed of Islamic radicals in Africa if we spent that omney there instead? igh, if onl their governments ween't so corrupt that probably only 5% of that woudl wind up doign some good.
PMCs are sucking up the money, have you seen the way haliburton and blackwater handles business? they have ties to the head honchos in the government. every time they get a blown tire, they bill the government for a new car.
Different numbers, same stupidity... ______________________________ Bush to Request Billions for Wars Hill Democrats Express Skepticism By Michael Abramowitz and Lori Montgomery Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, February 3, 2007; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/02/AR2007020201936_pf.html President Bush will ask Congress for close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars in defense spending on Monday, including $245 billion to cover the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and other elements of the "global war on terror," senior administration officials said yesterday. Democrats said the gigantic spending request will precipitate "sticker shock" on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers were already planning to scrutinize White House war-spending requests more zealously. As expected, Bush will ask Congress for an additional $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan for the current fiscal year, to go with the $70 billion already approved. He will also seek an additional $145 billion for the wars in fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, and administration officials warned that even more money probably will be needed. Those totals come on top of regular spending for the Pentagon, which officials say will be $481 billion in 2008, a 10 percent increase over this year's budget. If approved by Congress, the new war spending would bring the overall cost of fighting to about $745 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States -- adjusting for inflation, more than was spent on the Vietnam War. The administration has obtained most of the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through emergency or supplemental spending bills, which are not subject to the same level of congressional scrutiny as the regular budget. That practice has drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers and members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. To answer those critics, White House budget officials say they will offer a much more detailed accounting of the costs of the war than they have previously provided, adding a special chapter to the thick budget books the president plans to send to Congress. But those details could be used by opponents of the war in arguing their case, according to lawmakers and other experts on Pentagon spending. Moreover, some war critics in Congress have served notice that they intend to use the spending bills containing the new money to try to bring the war in Iraq to a close. "The defense budget request is the sleeper political issue of the year," said John J. Hamre, a former top Pentagon official who is chief executive of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "When you add the various supplemental requests to the baseline defense budget, you get an astounding number, a number easily exploited by political opponents." Top House Democrats, gathered yesterday in Williamsburg for a retreat, sounded skeptical about the new defense numbers and said they will not give the president a blank check. "This is a huge number," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who noted that it includes an "opportunity cost" that would cut into Democrats' ability to fund domestic priorities. "You can't help but note the irony: The president calls for us to rein in spending but sends us a budget for more than $700 billion in new spending," said House Budget Committee Chairman John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.). "For Republicans who profess to oppose big spending, this will be a budget they will find hard to swallow." Still, Spratt, Pelosi and other lawmakers did not rule out supporting the request. "We clearly want to make sure our troops have everything they need," said Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement that Democrats pledge to provide U.S. troops with "everything they need to do their jobs" but warned: "It is past time for the President to accurately and appropriately budget for this war and give the American people a full accounting of its true cost." Though defense spending would see huge increases, the president's budget would allow a 1 percent increase for spending other than on defense, the first time in two years Bush has not sought cuts in government operations outside the Pentagon and homeland security. Bush's budget also calls for slowing the rapid growth of Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, by one percentage point. The president proposes to slice $66 billion over five years from previous projections by reducing payments to health-care providers such as hospitals and nursing homes and by charging wealthier seniors higher premiums for prescription-drug coverage. The president wants to extend tax cuts that were enacted in 2001 and 2003 instead of letting them expire in 2010, as they are scheduled to do, and his budget would prevent the alternative minimum tax from expanding to ensnare millions of additional families next year. But after that, the president's budget would depend on billions of dollars in new revenue because of the rapid growth of the AMT. That additional revenue -- along with projections for a healthy economy -- would allow Bush to keep his promise that the budget would be balanced by 2012, according to administration estimates, and that there would be a surplus, the first since Bush took office in 2001, despite a significant increase in military spending. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Congress has approved about $500 billion for military operations and terrorism-related activities, much of it appropriated as emergency spending. The Iraq Study Group, headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton, concluded in December that the public has not been "well-served" by that process and that the funds have received minimal scrutiny from either the White House or the Republican-controlled Congress. Since Democrats took charge on Capitol Hill last month, they have promised to scrutinize the administration's spending requests more aggressively. "We're going to be very focused in looking to see whether the funds are being spent wisely or simply going to fatten the pockets of big contractors like Halliburton," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). Vin Weber, a Republican strategist and former congressman, said he has long thought the coming defense bills would be among the most controversial facing the new Congress, which is now considering a nonbinding resolution to condemn Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq. Although some members have talked about tying the president's hands through the budget process, others are reluctant to try that for fear of being accused of not supporting the troops. If the situation in Iraq does not improve, however, many Democrats will be under pressure to restrict funding, Weber said. Whatever happens on the battlefield, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) predicted, the United States will be paying for the war for years to come. "There's going to be real sticker shock when we get down to what the truth is about the cost of this war," he said. "It's going to be way beyond what anybody has fessed up to."
holy crap....i mean just wow If we had spent that much money on education in third world countries, this planet would be such a better (pro-america) place.
It's funny how one of the pillars of successful American foreign policy, the Marshall Plan, is never emulated these days, while obviously failed policies, like Vietnam, are the model.
No, it won't be enough, but we don't do nearly as much as we could, and as we did in the past as a percentage of GDP. Foreign aid does make a difference. I've seen programs at work first hand. My Dad used to spend his summers in other countries heading tech programs for USAID. They taught colleges and universities the latest technologies to teach, and the latest methods of teaching them. I was able to go with him in the mid-1960's to one in Bangalore. Today, it's the Silicon Valley of India. I'd like to think people like my father gave them at least a nudge in the right direction. We spend more giving guns to other countries than we do giving education to other countries. Something is seriously wacked with that. D&D. Foreign Aid Helps.
I agree in general. Look at the AIDS in Africa situation, however. How much do we give to fight AIDS in Africa? Bush is already donating more money per year than Clinton who gave tons of money for the same situation. It doesn't matter to most though because it's still not enough. At some point we have to realize that no matter how much we do it won't be enough because when it comes to generosity, the world as a whole is pretty pessimistic and focuses on what we aren't doing compared to what we are. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to help out other areas of the world I just think it's a little overly optimistic to think that throwing a little money will make the US the beacon of world goodwill.
theres a huge difference. 20 thousand US troops might do nothing. whereas virtually every person who gets aids medication is saved. if i was sure that a hundred billion would solve iraq i'd have no issues. if i was sure that a hundred billion would reduce violence in half or cut the civil war in half i'd have no problems. but i dont think it does anything. whereas with aids it does. might not do enough but there are substantive quantifiable results.
Why can't the democrats just cut the funding for the PMCs? I think we hired 50,000 civilian contractors (ie the mercenaries). Suppose each of them is 200k a year after social security and what not, that's $10 billion worth of saving a year at the very least.
PMCs? That stands for what? The majority of contractors in Iraq aren't carrying weapons. They're trying to do jobs they're being highly paid for, understandably. Those are jobs, many of them, that the military itself used to do when they had the manpower. It's not like we're hiring Hessians, like the British did to fight in America during our revolution. I don't know of any troops for hire. Do you? Several thousand bodyguards aren't the same thing at all. D&D. Blacked Out.
This isn't really a response to my point. My point was that no matter how much we do, it won't be enough. I wasn't saying whether or not this plan will or won't work.
QUESTION #1: How much of this 100 Billion finds its way to Haliburton? I think at least 60~75 Billion Question #2: How *little* of it will find its way to Veteran's benefits? Less that a 100 Mill Rocket River Support the Troops. . .. even after they come home . . .
