Editor's Note: This request does not include a 120 billion dollar request for Iraq and Afghanistan, which brings the total to at least 559 billion for the Pentagon. At the end of the cold war, the defense budget was 283 billion. In 1980, the federal government's total revenue was less than 520 billion dollars. -- sg.

Also see below:     
Bush's Bill for War Is Rising    [

    Bush to Request $439.3B Defense Budget
    By Lolita C. Baldor
    The Associated Press

    Friday 03 February 2006

    Washington - President Bush next week will request a $439.3 billion Defense Department budget for 2007, a nearly 5 percent increase over this year, according to senior Pentagon officials and documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

    The spending plan would include $84.2 billion for weapons programs, a nearly 8 percent increase, including billions of dollars for fighter jets, Navy ships, helicopters and unmanned aircraft. The total includes a substantial increase in weapons spending for the Army, which will get $16.8 billion in the 2007 budget, compared with $11 billion this year.

    Senior defense officials provided the totals on condition of anonymity because the defense budget will not be publicly released until Monday. The figures did not include about $50 billion that Bush administration officials said Thursday they would request as a down payment for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. The administration said war costs for 2006 would total $120 billion.

    The budget plan continues administration efforts to transform the military into a more efficient, agile fighting force, while also making investments in new technologies that will better equip troops to fight the global war on terror.

    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would not provide any details of the budget Thursday but called it appropriate, adding: "We have been able to fund the important things that are needed. It is a sizable amount of money."

    The budget proposal represents the fifth year in a row that spending on weapons has increased, after years of cutbacks during the 1990s.

    It also provides funding for 42 Army Brigade Combat Teams as part of the ongoing effort to increase the number of combat units from 33. The expansion would allow soldiers to spend two years at their home station for every year they are deployed to a war front.

    Overall, the Army would receive $111.8 billion, including $42.6 billion for personnel. The Army National Guard would receive about $5.25 billion for personnel, and the Army Reserves would receive $3.4 billion.

    The documents say the budget plan will provide the funding needed to win the long war on terror, recruit and retain troops, and continue the transformation to a more agile fighting force for the 21st century.

    The Army's key weapons program, the Future Combat System, will be funded at $3.3 billion, and there will be $583 million to buy nearly 3,100 more heavily armored Humvees. The budget also includes nearly $800 million for 100 Stryker transport vehicles, built by General Dynamics Land Systems.

    During a speech Thursday, Rumsfeld said the Pentagon is learning to do more with less.

    "We are finding ways to operate that department in ways that are considerably more efficient and more respectful of taxpayers' dollars," he said. "We are getting much more for the dollar today than we were five years ago."

    In other budget programs, the Air Force will receive about $2.2 billion for the F-22 fighter - slashing the 2006 total nearly in half. The drop in funding, however, is actually a contract restructuring that would return that money - and more - over the long run by stretching out the program for an additional two years and buying four more planes. The new plan calls for buying 20 of the aircraft, built by Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, each year in 2008, 2009 and 2010, rather than 56 in the next two years.

    The Navy will receive about $2.5 billion for the next Virginia Class submarine, built by Electric Boat in Connecticut and Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, and there is $360 million in the budget for development of the new CH53K heavy lift helicopter, built by Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft for the Marine Corps.

    Other programs in the budget include:

• $5.6 billion to support a wide variety of programs to address the multiple needs of military families, including child care, family counseling, tuition assistance and family centers.
  
  
• About $1.8 billion for 81 Army Black Hawk and Navy Hawk helicopters.
  
  
• $1.3 billion for five of the new Joint Strike Fighters.

 

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    Go to Original

    Bush's Bill for War Is Rising
    By Mark Mazzetti and Joel Havemann
    The Los Angeles Times

    Friday 03 February 2006

Congress will probably approve the $70-billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan funding. But chances for a tax cut this year may founder.

    Washington - The White House said Thursday that it planned to ask Congress for an additional $70 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, driving the cost of military operations in the two countries to $120 billion this year, the highest since the Sept. 11 attacks.

    Most of the new money would go to the war in Iraq, which already has cost an estimated $250 billion since the US invasion in March 2003. The additional spending, along with other war funds the Bush administration will seek separately in its regular budget next week, would push the price tag for combat and nation-building since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly half a trillion dollars - approaching the cost of the 13-year-long Vietnam War.

    Congress has granted all previous administration requests for war funds, and this one is expected to be no different. But budget analysts said the size of the newest request could make it more difficult for the Bush administration to get any new tax cuts through Congress this year. The cost of military operations in 2006 is $35 billion higher than what Congress had estimated a few months ago the Defense Department would need this year.

    The higher costs are occurring even as the Pentagon is planning to reduce troop levels in Iraq in coming months, reflecting the continuing wear and damage to military equipment in desert combat, the need to upgrade protection for US soldiers and the effort to train and equip Iraqi forces. No large-scale reconstruction projects are included in the spending, officials said.

    The rising costs contrast starkly with projections before the war. Former White House economic advisor Lawrence B. Lindsey predicted in September 2002 that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, drawing administration ire for such a high estimate and eventually resigning his post.

    "People in the White House said [Lindsey] was way off," said budget expert Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent defense research group in Washington. "It turns out he was. But just not in the direction they thought."

    In the spring of 2003, top administration officials, including then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, said Iraq's vast oil reserves would help defray the costs of an extended US stay. Nearly three years later, oil revenue is far below expectations and the Iraqi government can pay for only a small fraction of its reconstruction.

    The White House also told Congress on Thursday that it would ask for $18 billion in supplemental funds for Hurricane Katrina relief - bringing to $105 billion the amount planned for administration spending on Gulf Coast recovery.

    The federal coordinator for Katrina recovery, Donald E. Powell, did not specify how the funds would be spent. Aides said they would release details within a few weeks.

    Democrats on Capitol Hill were quick to question how the funds would be allocated.

    "We certainly welcome additional federal assistance," said Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.). "But I am highly concerned that the administration's proposal, which lacks details, will put more money into dysfunctional federal bureaucracies like FEMA and won't adequately address urgent needs such as housing, levees and flood protection."

    The war spending plans were detailed in a conference call with reporters held by Joel D. Kaplan, a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Kaplan said the request would pay for military operations, training of soldiers and police in Iraq and Afghanistan, repairing and replacing equipment, and running US embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kaplan said the money would also go toward buying new equipment to help protect US troops from roadside bombs - the deadliest weapon of Iraq insurgents.

    The $70 billion that the administration plans to seek would be added to $50 billion approved by Congress in December as an advance on 2006 expenses, making this year the most expensive yet for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are tabulated together in federal legislation.

    Congress has approved five emergency spending measures since Sept. 11, 2001, and other federal funds have been moved into the effort to wage battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. In all, more than $400 billion will have been set aside or spent by the end of this year.

    The administration plans to seek the additional $70 billion as special "supplemental" funding - an emergency procedure outside the regular budget process that has stirred controversy on Capitol Hill, where critics have complained that the war costs have grown more predictable as the Iraq effort enters its fourth year next month.

    But as in previous years, the supplemental budget request also will ask Congress to pay for programs that are not directly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kaplan said part of the supplemental funding - he did not say how much - would go toward the Army's effort to convert its forces into smaller, more deployable combat units.

    Some budget experts have criticized the practice of including in "emergency" spending bills the costs of programs not directly tied to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, which lobbies for balanced budgets, said the Pentagon might intentionally be seeking more money than it needed for this year so that next year's funding request would look small by comparison.

    The administration has used a similar strategy to good advantage on the overall budget, Bixby said, by low-balling its revenue estimates and then crediting a strong economy with generating more revenue than expected.

    Analysts said the budget request would probably pass Congress by wide margins.

    Brian Riedl, a budget specialist with the Heritage Foundation, summed it up: "Nobody wants to vote against the troops."

    The administration also plans to seek a down payment on 2007 war costs and will include a request for $50 billion in its regular budget being presented to Congress on Monday.

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