Congress takes action

[AUman43 5]

Ending the budget gimmickry on Iraq

The White House says it will stop using "emergency" appropriations to cover the costs of the military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Article Last Updated: 01/18/2007 08:01:18 PM MST

The Denver Post

Congress took a crucial first step on the road back to fiscal responsibility Thursday with hearings on the past and future costs of the Iraq war.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., used the first hearing to scour the use of "emergency" supplemental spending bills to pay for what seems destined to become the costliest conflict the U.S. has waged since World War II. Spratt said the Iraq war has cost taxpayers $379 billion to date and is expected to cost another $140 billion this year. This year's tab alone is thus nearly three times as much as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the whole war would cost before it started.

Regardless of how Americans may feel about the war itself, there can be no question that comprehensive hearings on its cost and how to pay for it are long overdue.

To this date, the Bush administration has chosen to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now in their fifth and sixth years respectively, by means of "emergency" supplemental appropriations with relatively little supporting detail. Such emergency measures are properly used for unforeseeable disasters like Hurricane Katrina and were appropriate to pay the start-up costs of the war on terror in the wake of Sept. 11. But it's ludicrous to use the mechanism year after year to handle the costs of the ongoing deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At Thursday's hearing, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the Budget Committee that the president's upcoming $100 billion-plus emergency request for the 2007 budget year would be the last such request. The administration's budget request for 2008 - to be presented the same day as the supplemental request for the current year - will be accompanied by an estimate for the war's costs in that year, though the figure might be adjusted later, England said.

Tina Jonas, the Pentagon's top budget officer, told the budget panel the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached almost $10 billion a month, up from about $8 billion per month for 2006.

The runaway costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan can be illustrated by comparing them to Vietnam. When that war ended in 1975, it had cost $660 billion in today's dollars during a 10-year conflict that claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans and an estimated 1.3 million Vietnamese. At the present rate of spending, U.S. costs in Iraq and Afghanistan will surpass the Vietnam total sometime in 2008.

We applaud the efforts of Spratt and his colleagues to get a handle on the war's budgetary impact. If we can't even calculate the Iraq war's cost to the treasury, how can we even hope to measure its price in lives and America's standing in the world.

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That's funny. Let's focus on Iraq and still do nothing about the bridges to nowhere. Pork barrel spending comes from both sides of the isle. Now the dims want to use this crap as their, "We'll clean up rampant spending" initiative. More smoke and mirrors from congress themselves.

[AUloggerhead 2,253]

Actions speak louder than words. If they exercise some fiscal discipline, I'll be the first to give them the credit. History is not on the Dem's side, though. The last Democrat-controlled Congress to produce a budget surplus was in 1969 -- the only one since the early 60's. All the rest have produced buget deficits.

[Tigermike 3,055]

Pelosi's First Hundred Hours: The Bill Comes Due

Andy McCarthy

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Day One of the ballyhooed First 100 Hours of Democrat rule in the House. It involved hasty passage, in the absence of any hearings on cost, effectiveness or anything else, of many — but not, as previously advertised, all — of the remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations.

The Congressional Budget Office has now estimated the costs of the dubious initiatives (such as inspecting every piece of cargo entering the United States by air or sea). It's not pretty: $21 billion over five years — which translates into about half the entire homeland security budget for this year.

The New York Times reports the reaction of Rep. Pete King (R-NY), now the ranking member on the Homeland Security Commmittee: “This bill was rushed to the floor without the Democratic leadership giving us any indication of its massive cost[.] And now we know why.”

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M...TYzODkzYTcyZmQ=