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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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February 3rd,
2007 - Record $ 622 Billion Budget Requested for the Pentagon |
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Record $ 622 Billion Budget
Requested for the Pentagon By David S. Cloud New York Times February 3, 2007 Washington, Feb. 2 - The
Bush administration is seeking a record military budget of $622 billion for the
2008 fiscal year, Pentagon officials have said. The sum includes more than
$140 billion for war-related costs. The administration is also
seeking $93 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, to
pay for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the officials
said. The requests are part of the
annual budget request to Congress for all federal spending programs. The
budget is to be made public on Monday, and Congress will revise it in the
coming months. Together with money for
combat operations this year already approved by Congress, the new request
would push spending related to Iraq and Afghanistan to $163 billion. “It is the highest level of
spending since the height of the Korean War,” said Steven Kosiak, a military budget
expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a policy
analysis organization here. Mr. Kosiak said that in 1952
the United States spent the equivalent of $645 billion in today’s dollars,
factoring in inflation, and that in the Korean War military spending exceeded
13 percent of the gross national product. The figure is now 4 percent. With Democrats in control of
Congress and opposition to the Iraq war running strong, the administration’s
request may face even greater scrutiny than it has in recent years. But few
if any budget experts expect significant cuts in military spending while
large numbers of troops are in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a statement, the Senate majority
leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said: “Democrats pledge that our troops will
receive everything they need to do their jobs. We will also subject this
supplemental to the tough and serious oversight that Congress has ignored for
four years.” The regular Pentagon budget
request for 2008, which excludes war-related costs but covers Army, Navy, Air
Force and Marine costs as well as other spending, will be $481 billion, a
Pentagon official said. That would be an increase of $49 billion over what
Congress provided this year, Mr. Kosiak said. “As long as we’re engaged in
major military operations, you are probably not going to see decreases in the
baseline budget,” he said. The Pentagon is seeking
$128.6 billion for the Army, $110.7 billion for the Air Force and $140
billion for the Navy, department officials said.Background briefings for
members of Congress and their staffs have begun. As details leaked out,
Pentagon officials agreed to provide an outline of the request. The officials
said the budget included no cancellations of major weapons systems, despite
delays and escalating costs in procurement accounts in all the services. The $141 billion request for
war-related costs in 2008 represents the first time the administration has
tried at the beginning of the budget cycle to provide a total estimate for
how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other military operations will
cost a year in advance. Congress has been pressing
the administration for several years to provide such estimates. Even as they
comply, Pentagon officials emphasized that actual costs could be far
different, depending on the course of the wars. The budget request, which
takes many months to prepare, is being released as the administration is
sending an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq. A spokesman for the
Pentagon, Bryan Whitman, said Friday that that the Office of Management and
Budget had estimated that the additional forces would cost $5.6 billion in
the current fiscal year, which ends in September. On Thursday, the Congressional
Budget Office released its estimate, which said the costs could run much
higher. Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates, at a Pentagon news conference, disputed the office’s estimate, saying
it greatly overstated the number of support troops that would be necessary to
go along with the 21,500 increase in combat forces. Mr. Gates also said he had
recommended that President Bush nominate Adm. Timothy J. Keating of the Navy,
now commander of Norad, as commander of the United States Pacific Command,
making him the top commander in the Pacific, and Lt. Gen. Gene Reunart of the
Air Force to head the Northern Command, which is responsible for defending
the continental United States. Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/washington/03spend.html |