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Murtha: Iraq bill to come up in March |
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to make new recommendations to Iraq strategy in April. That could also influence the money request for 2009.
“What I told Gen. Petraeus is [that] you can’t continue to spend money like he is spending over there, and the public is fed up with it,” Murtha said.
Murtha added that the cost of the war in Iraq is to blame for the other economic problems at home, including the threat of a recession.
“Our national debt has ballooned by $2.77 trillion since the beginning of the war in Iraq, increasing by nearly $1 million per minute,” Murtha said in his CSIS presentation. “This administration borrows $343 million every day to finance the war in Iraq and continues to shortchange our domestic needs.”
The Appropriations Defense panel chairman said that the defense budget is inevitably going to be reduced “no matter who is elected” in November.
Defense spending has seen a record growth in the last six years. The $515.4 billion defense budget for 2009 represents a 74 percent increase from the 2001 budget, according to the White House.
Meanwhile, Murtha said that he is listening to the Air Force’s case for more Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fighter jets, which are meant to replace the Cold War-era F-15 fighters.
“They have to prove to us that there is a threat and there are that many needed and they are in the process of doing that now,” he said. “I would like to buy enough to get the price down, and whether we will be able to do that I do not know.”
He said he is consider the remaining 2008 supplemental, the 2009 supplemental and the regular defense budget as vehicles to buy more F-22s.
He is also planning to add 14 Boeing C-17 cargo aircraft to the 2008 supplemental, as well as more Lockheed C-130Js, the number of which is not yet clear.
“We are going to buy enough 130s to reduce the price by $10 million a copy,” he said.
Murtha also criticized the Navy’s shipbuilding budget request of seven ships and said that he is ready to add money for three more ships next year.
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