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Congress must pass war funding, Bush says

President Bush shifted his sights from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the future needs of the strained military during a visit with top defense officials at the Pentagon on Thursday.

But he spent little time on the topic afterward, instead blasting Congress over its failure to pass a wartime spending bill.

“The missions of this department are essential to saving America’s lives,” Bush said. “And they are too important to be disrupted or delayed or put at risk.

“Pentagon officials have warned Congress that the continued delay in funding our troops will soon begin to have a damaging impact on the operations of this department. I ask Congress to provide this essential funding to our troops, before the members leave on their Christmas vacation.”

Bush, who was accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, also reiterated Pentagon complaints that failure to pass his almost $200 billion war funding request for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 means the services will have to begin draining their normal annual operations and maintenance funds to pay for war operations.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Nov. 21 that if a spending bill is not passed, the Army and Marine Corps will run out of money for the wars by mid-February and mid-March, respectively, and the furlough of as many as 200,000 civilian and contract workers could begin a few weeks into January.

On Nov. 26, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody issued a memo ordering commanders to prepare plans for widespread layoffs of civilian personnel should funding not materialize, telling them to assume that all operations and maintenance funds “will be fully obligated or committed” on or about Feb. 22.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., responded forcefully to Bush’s comments Thursday afternoon.

In a statement on his House Web site, Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, noted that over the past year Congress “has appropriated over $1 trillion to the Department of Defense, including $471 billion that was signed into law earlier this month,” Murtha said. “We are spending $14 billion every month on this war. In the past year alone, Democrats added over $25 billion to improve the readiness of military units here at home, funds not requested by the president.

“Unfortunately, when Congress presented the president with a bipartisan plan to improve military readiness, he resisted and fought our efforts to add readiness funding and requirements. Specifically, he vetoed a funding bill that would have considerably improved readiness by requiring that all troops being sent to Iraq are fully trained and equipped; that their deployment time in theater is limited; and that they are provided with sufficient rest and recuperation between deployments.”

Murtha said U.S. military readiness “suffers because of the president’s open-ended policy in Iraq. The best way to improve our military readiness is for the president to provide our military and nation with a responsible plan for transitioning our forces in Iraq and bringing them home.”

In his brief remarks at the Pentagon, Bush made no mention of what officials said would be a fresh review of strategy for the Middle East wars. And he only briefly noted what was said to be a Defense Department briefing on the military’s long-range strategic requirements.

“We discussed the long-term needs of our military services and the importance of progressing with modernization,” Bush said.

In previewing Bush’s visit, Morrell said Wednesday that Bush and Pentagon officials would be talking about “the need for sustained investment in our national defense long after the conflicts in which we are currently engaged have ended.”

Other likely topics, officials said, included increases in ground force end strength and recruiting and retention efforts.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman earlier described the meeting as a “periodic update” for the president on the future direction of the force.

Similar briefings in the past have touched on such topics as the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, he said. Thursday’s briefing was the first Bush has received at the Pentagon since a late-August visit just prior to a string of presentations to Congress on the Iraq war by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. ground commander there.

Officials said Bush, Cheney and Hadley met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, Vice Chairman Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the individual service chiefs and other White House and Pentagon officials.