Bush Request Would Push War Total to $440B

[Sean]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060203/...cy_spending_12

The Bush administration said Thursday it will ask Congress for $120 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $18 billion more for hurricane relief this year. The White House acknowledges the upcoming requests would cause total spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, to soar well past the $400 billion mark, while spending for hurricane relief would top $100 billion. Details of the requests are not final, but the 2007 budget proposal that President Bush is to submit next week will reflect the totals for planning purposes. The president also will ask Congress to devote another $2.3 billion to prepare for a bird flu epidemic, congressional aides said. About $70 billion of the new war money will be requested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, bringing total spending on the two campaigns to $120 billion for the current budget year. The other $50 billion in new war money will be set aside in the 2007 budget for the first few months of the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. More money will likely be needed in 2007. The bulk of the funding will go toward military operations, officials said, but the money will also replace damaged, destroyed or worn out equipment. Another part of the request would provide aid to train Iraqi security forces and otherwise combat the insurgency in Iraq. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $320 billion has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including $50 billion that Congress sent Bush in December. Administration officials said the new figures were estimates and the totals could change slightly before they are officially presented to Congress. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the requests reflect the president's desire to "commit the resources that are necessary to fight and win the war on terrorism." The requested money would cover troop salaries and benefits, repairing and replacing equipment, supporting U.S. embassies in the two countries and taking on the insurgency. It would cover the costs of continuing to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces and to protect U.S. troops.

[RickSp]

So much for quick victory and cheap wars.

White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30, 2003 — The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials. In a telephone interview today, the official, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, also said there was likely to be a deficit in the fiscal 2004 budget, though he declined to specify how large it would be. The administration is scheduled to present its budget to Congress on Feb. 3. Mr. Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.

[Rainbow]

Quote by: Sean Bush Request Would Push War Total to $440B http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060203/...cy_spending_12

It is $10 billion less to the original plan, still :-)))))

[Clarence]

The White House acknowledges the upcoming requests would cause total spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, to soar well past the $400 billion mark,

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $320 billion has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including $50 billion that Congress sent Bush in December.

Where's the other $80 billion?

[bishop]

yeah, i posed the same question in another thread.. the accounting for this war is extremely questionable imo.. they toss around billions like i toss cigarette butts.

[Apeman81]

Quote by: RickSp So much for quick victory and cheap wars. White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq

When the devil was that ever a standard?

[Apeman81]

Quote by: bishop yeah, i posed the same question in another thread.. the accounting for this war is extremely questionable imo.. they toss around billions like i toss cigarette butts.

The congress does the same thing here at home with discretionary domestic spending

[Clarence]

Quote by: Apeman81 The congress does the same thing here at home with discretionary domestic spending

true. Were you thinking of anything in particular?

[RickSp]

Quote by: Apeman81 When the devil was that ever a standard?

That is what the Bushites claimed when they said that the war would cost only $50 to $60 billion. Can you say cakewalk?

[Rainbow]

Do not forget it, guys :
- extra 2 years (not included within a budget) for new Iraqi security personnel training
As you can recall, those 2 years were lost, due to Iraqi security personnel infliltration, and funds must be provided for that task.

[RickSp]

A related calculation:

IRAQ'S CIVIL WAR HAS COST $3,000 PER U.S. FAMILY-- SO FAR

God forbid critics of the war on Iraq should compare it with the war in Vietnam. But perhaps it is worth mentioning that the liberation of Iraq is now costing more each month than the preservation of the Republic of South Vietnam did more than 30 years ago. As the admitted direct cost of the war reached $250 billion last week -- and the White House asked for $120 billion more on Thursday -- new analyses estimate that the invasion of Iraq could end up costing $2 trillion before it is over. If you remember, the White House's own economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was fired for predicting, in September 2002, six months before the invasion, that the total cost of the war might reach between $100 billion and $200 billion. What I (and perhaps others who questioned the wisdom of the war before it began) remember is the hundreds of e-mails and letters I received after I quoted Lindsey and used the higher figure as more likely. "Moron" and "traitor" were among the more polite epithets of the day. The war, in fact, is a factor in the escalating cost of petroleum products here and everywhere else in the world. Leaving that aside as you watch the gas-pump digits rise to Super Bowl numbers this weekend, two anti-war research institutes, the International Relations Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, estimate that the war's cost per citizen has reached $727 -- or close to $3,000 for a family of four. By the end of this year, those figures should reach about $1,300 per citizen, or more than $5,000 for that family of four. That calculation was based on a very conservative estimate of war costs to date of $204 billion. But even with that low-balling, those billions could have provided health care for 46 million Americans without health insurance, the hiring of 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or the construction of 2 million units of affordable housing. It's money lost in the fog of war -- or perhaps it will be used to do wonderful things for us all by Halliburton and the other defense contractors and private militaries being paid to make Iraq into Iowa with oil. One final point. One of the lessons we supposedly learned in Vietnam was that foreign intervention can no longer prevail in civil wars. I happened to run into a couple of Americans just back from Iraq, one of whom had also served as a U.S. Marine officer in Vietnam. Their verdict on what was happening in Iraq now was: "Well, we're exactly where we were determined not to be. We're in the middle of a civil war."