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 News from Around the Americas | January 2007 
Pentagon Sees US War Cost in Iraq Rising
 Richard Cowan - Reuters
| | The day-to-day cost of Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached almost $10 billion a month. That is up from an average of $8 billion per month for 2006. |
The steadily rising Iraq war price tag will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year, Pentagon spokesmen said last week, as heavy replacement costs for lost, destroyed and aging equipment mount.
The Pentagon has been estimating last year's costs for the increasingly unpopular war at about $8 billion a month, having increased from a monthly "burn rate" of around $4.4 billion during the first year of fighting in fiscal 2003.
During testimony at a House Budget Committee hearing, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said that nearly four years into the war, the Pentagon's war costs were rising because it was having to replace big-ticket items such as helicopters, airplanes and armored vehicles that are wearing out or were lost in combat.
"We have a backlog and are seeing an increase," England told the panel.
When factoring in U.S. combat costs in Afghanistan, the Pentagon will spend about $9.7 billion a month during the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, according to Pentagon spokesmen.
Early next month, the administration is expected to ask Congress for a further $100 billion in "emergency" war money, on top of the $70 billion already approved for this year. The request comes as President George W. Bush has sketched out an increase of 21,500 U.S. troops in Iraq that could cost about $5.6 billion.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat, said he hoped Congress could avoid recurring emergency funding bills for the war. "We would like to get a better grasp of the cost of the Iraq war and the global war on terrorism - a way of accounting of costs to date and projecting costs to come."
Since fiscal 2001, Congress has approved $503 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other aspects of the U.S. "global war on terrorism," according to Congressional Budget Office testimony. Of that, $344 billion has gone for military, diplomatic and other security costs in Iraq, the CBO said.
Most of the funds have been provided on an emergency basis, outside regular budget procedures. Critics say that obscures the true cost of the war and results in less congressional oversight.
"Residual Tail"
Democrats won control of Congress in elections last November due largely to the Iraq war's unpopularity. England said the financial burden of the conflict would persist for some time.
He said even after the war ends, and he did not estimate when that would be, there would be two years of a "residual tail" of costs for rebuilding the military.
Democrats and Republicans on the budget panel grilled England on whether the Pentagon was slipping money for expensive, nonemergency projects into the emergency war funds requests.
Specifically, they inquired about reports Bush would ask for money to pay for two "Joint Strike Fighter" airplanes that are several years from being ready for combat, along with money for ballistic missiles and Navy aircraft repairs and procurement that is unrelated to Iraq combat.
England would not comment specifically on the upcoming request for emergency war money. But he said that when equipment was lost in Iraq, it was not replaced with "something old," but with new equipment.
Democrats have promised tougher oversight of defense spending, while challenging Bush's plans to broaden the American war effort in Iraq.
Pentagon Changes War Funding
Andrew Taylor - Associated Press
The Bush administration will abandon the practice of financing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through emergency spending requests that have relatively little supporting detail, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the House Budget Committee that President Bush's upcoming budget request for 2008 would be accompanied by an estimate for that year's war costs. England said Bush's $100 billion-plus emergency war request for the 2007 budget year, to be sent the same day, would be the last multibillion-dollar request, also known as a supplemental.
"In '08, there's not a plan to have a supplemental," England said.
Lawmakers in both parties have criticized the administration for funding the war through such requests, bypassing the normal budgetary review and accountability.
Such requests invariably contain fewer details and justifications than the Pentagon's annual budget blueprint.
But England said the longer-term 2008 request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be imprecise - essentially a "straight line" extrapolation of the expected costs for 2007. That probably means some adjustments would have to be made in subsequent legislation anyway.
"The closer you are in time, the closer you are to the right number," England told lawmakers.
Some Democrats want to use Congress's control of the Pentagon budget to try to thwart Bush's plan to add more troops to Iraq. England, however, said that $70 billion approved by Congress last fall will not run out until mid-April.
After that, Defense Secretary Robert Gates retains the authority to fund the fighting by transferring money from other Pentagon accounts.
Both Democrats and Republicans expressed frustration with the Pentagon for reportedly adding to the upcoming war request such items as the next-generation Joint Strike Fighters that are not explicitly related to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, in this case, test flights have only just begun.
Top committee Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told England that lawmakers believe the Pentagon is putting "the base budget into supplementals."
With the cost of the wars spiraling, the committee chairman said it is critical to account for them in long-term budget plans if Bush and majority Democrats are going to try to make good on promises to balance the budget.
"The costs of our operations in Iraq and the global war on terrorism increased from $96 billion in 2004 to $122 billion in 2006. Reports indicate that 2007 war costs could increase further to as high as $170 billion," said Rep. John Spratt Jr. (D-SC) "We have to account for the impact of these operations on the budgets bottom line."
The day-to-day cost of Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached almost $10 billion a month, according to Tina Jonas, the Pentagon's top budget officer. That is up from an average of $8 billion per month for 2006, Jonas told the committee. |
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