Washington – Keeping troops in Iraq for another year and a half will cost nearly a quarter-trillion dollars – about $800 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. – under the budget President Bush will submit to Congress on Monday.
Bush will ask for $100 billion more for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior Pentagon official said Friday. Those requests come on top of about $344 billion spent for Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
At the same time, Bush’s budget request will propose cost curbs on Medicare providers, a cap on subsidy payments to wealthier farmers and an increase to $4,600 in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students.
Bush’s proposal, totaling almost $3 trillion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, will kick off a major debate with the new Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats are sure to press for more money for domestic programs, and they’ve signaled they won’t consider renewing Bush’s tax cuts until closer to 2010, when they are to expire.
The White House plan will produce a surplus in 2012, budget director Rob Portman said Friday – assuming strong growth in tax revenues, continued curbs on domestic agencies’ spending and relatively modest cuts to farm programs, Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.
Bush’s plan assumes Congress extends the two rounds of tax cuts that were passed in 2001 and 2003.
Portman said Bush’s budget submission contains about a 1 percentage point cut in the rapid growth in Medicare – which averages almost 8 percent a year without changes – to squeeze about $66 billion in savings over five years from the health care program for the elderly.
Bush would curb payments to health care providers such as hospitals and would require more of the higher-income recipients to pay greater premiums.
His requests would bring war spending for fiscal 2007 to about $170 billion, with the $145 billion for 2008 representing a decline.
The White House assumes war spending will be down to $50 billion in 2009, with none planned beyond then in hopes the war in Iraq will have wound down.
