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Friday, February 02, 2007
If CBO Can Do It, So Can - and Should - OMB Do It
Based on the president's recent announcement of his plan to deploy an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq, CBO has released a report detailing the projected costs of such an escalation. CBO Director, Peter Orszag, predicts that the president's plan to increase troop levels could cost as much as $27 billion.
So far, the president has funded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through emergency, or supplemental, spending reqeusts to congress. Those requests have so far amounted to $503 billion. Since 2001, more than half of a trillion dollars has been allocated for war funding - the vast, vast majority of which has not been subject to normal budgetary procedures. Given that it is certain American forces will be deployed abroad for the next year (and probably the year after that), and given that military operations expenditures now have a five-history, budgeters can now make reasonable estimates of impending war expenditures.
There absolutely is no reason that when the president submits his budget to congress on Monday that it should not include costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His refusal to to subject war funding to the normal budget process will not only surely stymie his efforts to balance the budget by 2012, but it will also hinder congress's ability to construct a meaningful budget that will help guide them in preparing for the long term fiscal challenges that begin in a few short years when the Baby Boomers begin retiring en masse. The president owes it to the nation to fully account for all fiscal events that he believes will come to pass.
Posted by Craig Jennings
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