The money sponge, Iraq, having filtered funds to and from various budgets, is hard to squeeze dry fast enough to employ defunding the war as an efficient means to get us out. Barney Frank, new chair of the House Financial Services Committee, explained more to Keith Olbermann this week:
OLBERMANN: … Are you fearful that if you were to cut the money off, if you were to actually refuse to bankroll it, as a Congress, that … there`d still be money spent to send them there…
FRANK: Well, that`s the problem. It could be spent. The fact is that the Pentagon budget could — other money could be taken from other purposes and spend it. … We’ve already voted for the defense budget for the year.
He already has hundreds of billions of dollars legally in his possession to spend. So there is, in fact, no way, I think, to cut off the money, unless we were to pass a law [that said, None of the money that we`re voting can be used for this] and he would veto it. So we are frustrated in that extent.
With no line item veto, Congress may still hold open our wallet for one supplemental budget after another. For the FY 2007 supplemental budget, creative accounting came to the Pentagon. It redefined “emergency.” The recently submitted $99.7 Billion emergency supplemental budget extends beyond such traditional war costs as replacing what was lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the “overall efforts related to the global war on terror.” Among requests normally funded through the regular budget:
- money for future weaponry such as two Lockheed-Martin Joint Strike Fighter planes
- $2.52 Billion for research and development
- $3.04 billion for new and repaired aircraft for the Navy (likely to be pressed to cut billions of dollars in aircraft purchases in the regular budget, since it wants a $10 billion “next-generation” aircraft carrier)
“It’s a feeding frenzy,” says an army official involved in budget planning. “Using the supplemental budget, we’re now buying the military we wish we had,” he says…
The Pentagon has made commitments that may be hard to reneg on. From the Silver Lining Department: DOD’s Business Transformation Agency has good news for the manufacturing sector — the Iraqi manufacturing sector. It’s restarting Iraqi factories. The idea is that Iraqis at work won’t be Iraqis making trouble.
“But if there are Iraqis who make things that we can buy, it just makes lots of good sense to buy it from Iraqis” to “stimulate the economy, build good will.”
The U.S. military is spending more than $100 billion annually for the war. [Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense] said he hoped to spark the Iraqi economy by funneling some of that funding to newly restarted factories.
It’s a comfort that at least some blue collar workers will benefit from our money. Maybe not a comfort to the 2.8 Million who lost manufacturing jobs in America, January 2001 through January 2005, but shoot, you can’t please ’em all.
More moulah is required for other military-related services, e.g., an imperiled infrastructure. New facilities must be built to house returning service personnel and handle the transfers resulting from last year’s base-closing.
The Veterans Administration is heavily burdened by the unprecedented casualty level of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
So far, more than 200,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated at VA medical facilities … More than one-third of them have been diagnosed with mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, acute depression and substance abuse. Thousands more have crippling disabilities such as brain or spinal injuries. ….
[W]aiting lists to see a doctor at some facilities now run as long as several months. Shortages are particularly acute in mental health care….
At the same time, wounded veterans trying to obtain disability checks are being tied up in a bureaucratic nightmare. The Veterans Benefits Administration has a backlog of 400,000 pending claims — and rising.
Defense spending will be a major issue for the 110th Congress (there’s more in the Council on Foreign Relations’ detailed analysis). The amount of money alone isn’t what makes for controversy. It isn’t the added trillions to the deficit, alone, nor the deep cuts in veterans benefits, health care, and education programs. It’s the consequences to the country’s economic health of Republican carelessness with our treasure. They went to dinner leaving the bank vault open with a neon sign over the door blinking, “here, fool.”
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a numbers-whiz recently assigned to the House Appropriations Committee, rages over the U.S. debt, estimated at $8,672,139,821,920.
The Bush Administration’s failure to include details about the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cost it will take to rebuild the Gulf is unconscionable.
Incoming House Appropriations Committee chair, Dave Obey, said it will take years to get back on track from the fiscal disaster left by the Republicans.
But, when the Republican Congress adjourned without passing a budget and without enacting 9 of the 11 appropriations bills needed to fund government services for the year, they forfeited their right to complain about whatever action we are forced to take next year to clean up their chaotic mess.
As the President is in la-la land, it’s up to Congress:
Get creative.
