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December 15th,
2006 - Pentagon Eyes $ 468.9 bln Budget for Fiscal 2008 |
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Pentagon Eyes $ 468.9 bln Budget
for Fiscal 2008 By Andrea Shalal-Esa and Jim Wolf Reuters Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:39 PM ET Washington - The White House
has approved a $468.9 billion budget for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2008, a
six-percent increase over last year's request, according to a Defense
Department document obtained by Reuters. It is also asking the
Pentagon to cover some Army and Marine Corps war costs in Iraq and
Afghanistan as part of the regular budget, rather than through emergency
budget requests. The 2008 budget request is
$4.7 billion more than the level the Pentagon forecast in its 2007 budget
documents. Deputy Defense Secretary
Gordon England welcomed the increase in a letter to Rob Portman, director of
the White House Office of Management and Budget. But he strongly objected to
OMB's orders that "costs to accelerate Army and Marine Corps combat and
combat support units, Army Force Readiness and replacement of additional
aircraft losses" should be funded as part of the 2008 budget. England said that violated
the Pentagon's earlier agreement with the White House that the extra spending
would be used to cover Army budget shortfalls, and that war costs would
continue to be funded through supplemental budgets. The Bush administration is
continuing to discuss budgets with various government agencies, including the
Pentagon, and will submit a fiscal 2008 budget to Congress in February. "The inconsistency ...
is that adding war costs in the budget would effectively negate the prior
agreement for a topline increase," England said in the December 14
memorandum. Offsets proposed by White
House budget officials would "significantly weaken the department's
strategic position" and jeopardize the Pentagon's joint warfighting
concept, he said. England did not give details
on the proposed offsets. However, he said the Pentagon's
initial budget proposal - before the suggested offsets - was based on
thousands of hours of work, and the best judgment by senior military and civilian
leaders. "It is balanced and
provides for our nation's defense at a time of diverse and dramatic
threats," England said. War Costs U.S. lawmakers have grown
increasingly frustrated about the Pentagon's use of supplemental budgets to
fund war costs, given that the costs are no longer "unanticipated,"
said Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategy and Budgetary Assessments, a
Washington-based research group. But he said lawmakers wanted
more oversight of that spending than permitted in the supplemental budgets,
and there was no suggestion that they would curb funding for the war. "They would like the
administration to ask for most of the funding up front," he said. Kosiak also rejected
England's statement in the memo that the 2008 increase "reverses a trend
of declining real growth", calling England's description "flat-out
wrong". "There has been a
upward trend in real terms, above the rate of inflation," he said,
citing a 23 percent real increase, above inflation, in the Pentagon's budget
from 2000 to 2007. Loren Thompson of the
Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said England's letter revealed the
Pentagon's growing concern about being able to modernize its forces and fund
new weapons programs while paying escalating war bills. "This has real significance
for the Pentagon in terms of being able to fund other items besides the
war," he said. The Pentagon is likely to
ask for an additional $100 billion to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
early next year. The Pentagon's 2008 overall
budget request of $468.9 for fiscal 2008 is 6.3 percent higher than its
fiscal 2007 budget request of $441.2 billion. © Reuters 2006. All rights
reserved. External link: http://tinyurl.com/vt2eo |