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England presses for approval of funds, says Iraq war costs will exceed estimate |
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By Roxana Tiron
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Posted: 08/01/07 08:45 PM [ET] |
Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England is pressing Congress to approve both the 2008 defense budget and the supplemental funding by Oct. 1.
The cost of war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008 likely will exceed the $145.2 billion request the Bush administration made in February, England said during a House Budget Committee hearing Tuesday.
Gordon, the No. 2 civilian leader at the Pentagon, rejected any congressional attempts to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on a month-to-month or quarterly basis. He called it an approach that “will not work effectively.”
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee and a supporter of withdrawing the troops from Iraq, has expressed concern in recent weeks that Congress may not be able to pass the defense bills with the looming threat of a veto if the bills contain troop-withdrawal legislation. Murtha floated the idea of funding the military month by month.
“The department’s leadership, and commanders in the field, need sufficient, reliable and sustained funding to support processes and systems like logistics, equipment maintenance, acquisition of replacement equipment and the like,” England said in prepared testimony for a House Budget Committee hearing on the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Contractors need the guarantee of sufficient funding in order to plan production schedules and acquire the materials needed.”
England warned that insufficient or uncertain funding tends to delay delivery, drive up costs and delay essential equipment needed by troops in the field.
The deputy secretary of defense also told the committee that the Pentagon would need more money to support the current troop surge in Iraq during fiscal 2008, pointing out that some adjustments to the current 2008 war supplemental, which was submitted earlier this year, are expected.
“The request does not contain any funding for the plus-up of forces in Iraq past October 1, 2007,” England said. “The plus-up forces and their equipment will not be redeployed overnight, so some costs are expected.”
Adjustments also should be expected for the Iraqi security forces’ funding and the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles in fiscal 2008, he said.
While supplemental funding for 2008 was submitted together with the Pentagon’s budget request for the fiscal year, the supplemental is not being considered on the floor today with the regular defense budget.
House leadership is waiting until September to take it up, a move that would coincide with the delivery of a status report from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and the U.S. ambassador to that country, Ryan Crocker.
England added that future war funding requests beyond fiscal 2008 will be situation-dependent and will “require a flexible
approach.”
“History shows that post-war commitments — from Japan to Korea to Kosovo — can last for many years, taking a wide variety of forms,” he said. “Future requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan will depend on the course of events on the ground and the decisions made in the meantime.”
Congress has mandated that all the requests for war funding be submitted with the regular defense budget request. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has appropriated $602 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and other efforts in the war against terrorism, with $533 billion going towards military operations and other Pentagon efforts, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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