[Texgreen] Bush pushes Congress to fund endless expanding war

[Roger Baker]

... The fiscal 2008 request will represent the 10th consecutive year  
of growth in the defense budget after a post-Cold War low point in  
1998...

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<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news? 
pid=20601070&sid=agUtu4R2l_as&refer=politics>

Bush to Request Record $716 Billion for Military Spending

By Tony Capaccio

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's record request for  
defense funding for 2008 may set up a fight with the Democratic  
Congress, keen to examine the budget for questionable spending.

Bush will request a $716 billion for defense spending and the global  
war on terror in his fiscal 2008 budget next week, according to a  
Pentagon document. The military funding request is greater than the  
annual gross domestic product of all but 14 countries.

The request to Congress includes $93.4 billion in additional money  
for fiscal 2007 to cover costs of the fighting in Iraq and  
Afghanistan. The remaining $622.6 billion would cover the year ending  
Sept. 30, 2008, and includes $141.7 billion for the wars.

Congress has already promised increased scrutiny of the additional  
funding request for 2007, wary that it will include items that should  
be funded in the annual budget, such as $389 million requested to buy  
two Lockheed Martin Corp. Joint Strike Fighters that won't be  
operational until 2012 to replace F-16 fighters lost in Iraq.

There's been ``less justification'' for the funding than there should  
be, House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina  
said in an Jan. 30 interview. Spratt said he and other lawmakers are  
concerned that the requests contained items not of an ``emergency''  
nature.

Increasing Troop Numbers

Bush proposes to add $7.7 billion over this year's budget to increase  
the Army by 65,000 troops and add $4.4 billion to increase the Marine  
Corps by 27,000 people by 2012. The budget also would add $700  
million to increase U.S. special operations forces by 5,575 on the  
way to a total force of 54,367 Army, Air Force and Navy commandos, an  
overall increase of almost 10,000 since fiscal 2005, according to the  
document.

``The budget provides the resources needed to organize, man, train  
and equip our military forces,'' said the two-page summary prepared  
by the Pentagon comptroller. ``The budget provides increases to  
substantially increase Army and Marine Corps capability and improve  
overall readiness,'' the summary said.

Fiscal 2007 defense spending will total about $622 billion if  
Congress approves the second half of the emergency wartime funding  
requested next week.

``That is more than we have spent, in real, inflation- adjusted  
dollars, in any year since the height of the Korean war and about  
$140 billion more in today's dollars than we spent at the height of  
the Vietnam War,'' Steven Kosiak, a defense analyst with the Center  
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment in Washington, said in an e- 
mailed statement.

Ten Years of Growth

The fiscal 2008 request will represent the 10th consecutive year of  
growth in the defense budget after a post-Cold War low point in 1998.

The basic peacetime budget for fiscal 2008 is $481.4 billion, or  
about 10.6 percent more than Congress approved for this year. It  
includes $101.7 billion for weapons and $75.1 billion for research  
and development.

The cost of the wars in fiscal 2007 would rise to $163.4 billion,  
$45.4 billion more than was approved in fiscal 2006 for wartime  
spending, if Congress approves the additional $93.4 billion. That  
figure is about $3.3 billion less than the $99.7 billion that the  
Pentagon estimated in December that it would need.

Previous emergency wartime requests have been readily approved  
because Congress was eager to support U.S. troops at war. Deputy  
Defense Secretary Gordon England got lawmakers' attention in October  
with a memo encouraging service chiefs to include in the new request  
any items related to the ``global war on terror,'' not strictly Iraq  
and Afghanistan.

Congress in the law authorizing defense spending this year required  
that the Pentagon, starting with fiscal 2008, break out the war  
funding request in its annual budget proposal.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio at  
acapaccio@bloomberg.net