Bush budget tactics criticized. - Lawmakers rankled by the administration's use of so-called supplemental budget requests to cover the wars.
Senators Grill Military Leaders on Budget Tactics
The chiefs of the military services faced sharp questioning on Capitol Hill on Thursday for submitting a $419-billion Pentagon budget that senators described as artificially low, with regular military costs left for an upcoming emergency spending bill.
Costs for 30,000 extra Army soldiers, 3,000 additional Marines and military equipment should be included in the regular 2006 Defense spending measure — not the $80-billion emergency war bill the Bush administration will seek next week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) said that moving costs out of the regular budget and into the war bill prevented Congress from closely examining the costs of war. It "removes from our oversight responsibilities the scrutiny that these programs deserve," McCain said.
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel's ranking Democrat, demanded to know why the $3.5-billion cost of 30,000 Army soldiers — added in 2004 — was excluded from President Bush's proposed Defense budget, which funded 482,000.
"Why is the full 512,000 not funded in the budget request?" Levin asked.
The Defense measure funds the Pentagon beginning with the start of the 2006 fiscal year in October. The emergency war measure was intended to provide money for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the current fiscal year.
Lawmakers have been rankled by the administration's use of so-called supplemental budget requests to cover the wars. It is politically perilous to oppose the supplemental measure, seen as necessary to sustain U.S. troops abroad. But the bill covers costs that many critics say should be included in the more intensely debated 2006 budget.
Thursday's session put the uniformed chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in the uncomfortable position of defending a spending plan that ultimately was decided by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, with advice from the commanders.
Faced with tough questioning that seemed aimed more at Rumsfeld and the White House than at the service chiefs, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker told senators that the Pentagon avoided other cuts by putting some of the spending in the war bill instead of the regular budget.
"If we were to pull that inside of our core budget, inside the '06 budget, we would have to displace other things that are too important to us," Schoomaker said.
Levin noted that the budget request covered only 175,000 of the 178,000 Marines on duty. The Pentagon also has sought funding for only nine unmanned aerial vehicles in the 2006 bud- get, although Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael W. Hagee acknowledged that he expected to fund more than twice that number next year.
"It's another example of where there is a requirement — something we all know we need, something we all know is going to be supported — which is not funded in this budget, which means that this budget shorts what the actual costs will be for our military in '06," Levin said.
Rumsfeld dismissed that criticism in a Pentagon briefing this week. Asked if he was hiding military funding in the supplemental bill, Rumsfeld, smiling, said: "No, that would be wrong. And we wouldn't do that."
(The Los Angles Times, 2-11-05.)
The chiefs of the military services faced sharp questioning on Capitol Hill on Thursday for submitting a $419-billion Pentagon budget that senators described as artificially low, with regular military costs left for an upcoming emergency spending bill.
Costs for 30,000 extra Army soldiers, 3,000 additional Marines and military equipment should be included in the regular 2006 Defense spending measure — not the $80-billion emergency war bill the Bush administration will seek next week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) said that moving costs out of the regular budget and into the war bill prevented Congress from closely examining the costs of war. It "removes from our oversight responsibilities the scrutiny that these programs deserve," McCain said.
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel's ranking Democrat, demanded to know why the $3.5-billion cost of 30,000 Army soldiers — added in 2004 — was excluded from President Bush's proposed Defense budget, which funded 482,000.
"Why is the full 512,000 not funded in the budget request?" Levin asked.
The Defense measure funds the Pentagon beginning with the start of the 2006 fiscal year in October. The emergency war measure was intended to provide money for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the current fiscal year.
Lawmakers have been rankled by the administration's use of so-called supplemental budget requests to cover the wars. It is politically perilous to oppose the supplemental measure, seen as necessary to sustain U.S. troops abroad. But the bill covers costs that many critics say should be included in the more intensely debated 2006 budget.
Thursday's session put the uniformed chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in the uncomfortable position of defending a spending plan that ultimately was decided by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, with advice from the commanders.
Faced with tough questioning that seemed aimed more at Rumsfeld and the White House than at the service chiefs, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker told senators that the Pentagon avoided other cuts by putting some of the spending in the war bill instead of the regular budget.
"If we were to pull that inside of our core budget, inside the '06 budget, we would have to displace other things that are too important to us," Schoomaker said.
Levin noted that the budget request covered only 175,000 of the 178,000 Marines on duty. The Pentagon also has sought funding for only nine unmanned aerial vehicles in the 2006 bud- get, although Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael W. Hagee acknowledged that he expected to fund more than twice that number next year.
"It's another example of where there is a requirement — something we all know we need, something we all know is going to be supported — which is not funded in this budget, which means that this budget shorts what the actual costs will be for our military in '06," Levin said.
Rumsfeld dismissed that criticism in a Pentagon briefing this week. Asked if he was hiding military funding in the supplemental bill, Rumsfeld, smiling, said: "No, that would be wrong. And we wouldn't do that."
(The Los Angles Times, 2-11-05.)
posted by Sid Cottingham | 6:33 PM
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