Bush’s $50B plan surprises DoD, Congress - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Bush’s $50B plan surprises DoD, Congress

Word that the White House plans to ask for an extra $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “came as a surprise to us,” an aide to a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee said.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had much the same reaction. “That’s news to me,” he told a deputy.

Although members of Congress and Pentagon officials expected there would be a request for more money, they did not expect it to be for so much.

President George W. Bush has already asked Congress for $147 billion to fund the wars in 2008. An extra $50 billion would push the total to $197 billion. War costs for 2007 total $173 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The extra $50 billion likely signals Bush intends to maintain the surge of 30,000 extra troops in Iraq well into next spring, said P.J. Crowley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The size of the new request “isn’t surprising given the surge,” said Crowley, a retired Air Force officer and special national security affairs assistant to President Bill Clinton. “By every measure, more troops are there, equipment is being worn out or damaged faster than projected.”

Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said it was clear to him that the $147 billion request did not include the cost of the troop surge, but be called an additional $50 billion “staggering.”

Congress must not continue to “simply write blank checks for the misguided policy in Iraq,” said Byrd, D-W.Va.

The House aide said the $50 billion sum, which was reported by The Washington Post and attributed to an unnamed White House official, might be an inflated trial balloon intended to make a smaller request seem more reasonable.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Geoff Morrell called the $50 billion report “premature.”

“We certainly will not come to sort of finality on what, if any, additional money we would like to ask for until after” Gen. David Petraeus reports to Congress Sept. 10, Morrell said.

When the House takes up the $147 billion war funding request this month, it is expected to debate amendments that would set troop withdrawal dates and impose other restrictions on the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq. While such measures might pass in the House, it is questionable they would survive in the Senate.

But a request for $50 billion more could improve the prospects for passing restrictive legislation, Crowley said. “The American people already think the war costs too much, and now the president is adding another $50 billion.”