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Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Next War Supplemental Reported to be Enormous
In a continued effort to totally ignore Congress's request to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the regular annual appropriations process, the Defense Department is in the process of constructing a new supplemental funding request for the wars for FY 2007 - reported to be a whopping $160 billion. Combined with the current $70 billion FY 2007 apporpriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could spend $230 billion on the wars by the time this fiscal year ends next September. That's approximately half of the total spending on the wars so far!
As if this wasn't bad enough, an internal Defense Department memo sent at the end of October encouraged the individual services to include even more money outside of the war effort in their supplemental requests. From CQ Today: ($)
In an Oct. 25 memorandum that expanded the emergency spending to costs associated with the global war on terrorism, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England encouraged the services to seek large supplemental requests. In the past, the Pentagon has used supplementals only to seek money for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Estimates are to include incremental costs related to the longer war against terror,” England wrote, specifically saying those costs could include repairing and replacing equipment as well as changing force structures.
We've said many, many, many times that the increasing reliance on supplemental appropriation requests poses significant threats to the fiscal health of the country. Supplementals weakenen fiscal responsibility, errode opportunities for congressional oversight (not that Congress is really all that interested in oversight these days), increase the opportunity for waste, fraud, and abuse of federal resources, and discourage long-term planning and preparedness. When is the Bush adiministration going to learn?
Posted by Adam Hughes
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