By John Yaukey
Gannett News Service
Washington – The cost to taxpayers of the Iraq war is about to go up again, as lawmakers inch closer to adding to the 2006 Pentagon budget request as much as $50 billion – much of which will go to cover operations in Iraq.
That would push the total cost for the campaign to almost a quarter-trillion dollars.
The Senate this week is expected to approve adding $50 billion to the Pentagon’s baseline allocation of $390 billion.
The House has approved adding $45 billion to a baseline amount of $363 billion.
Full congressional approval of the defense budget is expected this fall after House and Senate negotiators reconcile differences in the bills.
The additional military spending for Iraq comes as Congress already has approved $62.3 billion in hurricane relief for the Gulf Coast states hit by hurricanes.
Meanwhile, Louisiana’s congressional delegation has asked for an additional $250 billion for rebuilding aid over an unspecified time.
Government spending has become an issue of bipartisan agreement lately, raising deep concern among Republicans and Democrats.
“Making the Iraq money an add-on to the defense bill as we’re doing now effectively prevents the kind of debate Congress would have if it were a separate bill,” said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“It’s difficult with Iraq because you’re there, and you have to fund your people,” Riedl said.
“But Congress has not made any effort to offset those costs in areas where we can clearly make some cuts.”
Riedl said that was evident in the recent passage of the $286.5 billion transportation bill, loaded with pet projects for lawmakers.
In total, Congress has approved $350 billion in extra spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the larger war on terror since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Almost $200 billion has been for Iraq. The vast majority of money for Iraq and Afghanistan has come through a series of supplemental spending requests by the Bush administration.
These have had the effect of taking much of the war spending out of the defense budget.
Last year, Congress approved $80 billion in supplemental war spending that pushed total defense costs to $496.5 billion.
The current $45 billion to $50 billion add-on “will only get us through the next six months or so, at which point we’ll have to come up with more,” said Chris Hellman, a military budget analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
