Military services seek $160 billion extra to cover war costs

The military services and defense agencies have requested as much as $160 billion in supplemental spending for the remainder of fiscal 2007 -- a staggering figure that would bring wartime costs this year to $230 billion, defense sources said Friday.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has not yet approved the requests and does not plan to make a final decision until Nov. 15, one week after the midterm congressional elections. But should Rumsfeld sign off on the proposals, a move that defense analysts consider highly doubtful, it would double wartime expenditures from last year's totals.

The services' requests, first reported by InsideDefense.com, also would make total fiscal 2007 supplemental spending equal to more than half of the regular fiscal 2007 defense budget. The Army and Air Force requested $80 billion and $50 billion, respectively, for the last half of fiscal 2007, sources told CongressDaily. The Navy and Marine Corps appear to have submitted smaller requests.

Congress already has appropriated a $70 billion bridge fund to cover the war costs for the first several months of this fiscal year, $20 billion more than the Bush administration proposed last February in its fiscal 2007 budget request.

Several senior lawmakers, including Senate Budget Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., have become increasingly frustrated by the Defense Department's reliance on massive emergency spending bills, which bypass the authorization committees.

Military officials, too, have expressed concern that emergency spending hinders their ability to do long-term budget planning and, ultimately, could drive up costs of weapons systems.

"For all its flaws, [the Pentagon] used to have the most disciplined and orderly long-term budget planning process" in the federal government, said Gordon Adams, Office of Management and Budget associate director of national security during the Clinton administration. "This kind of practice over the last five years has killed it."

The services' latest budget requests appear to be a reaction to an Oct. 25 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England that expanded the "ground rules" for the fiscal 2007 supplemental by allowing inclusion of all costs related to the war on terrorism. Previously, the Pentagon has largely limited its supplemental requests to money needed to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

England cautioned in his memo that "only costs related to the Global War on Terror will be included in the supplemental." Everything else, he said, must be covered in the regular budget.

But defense analysts argue paying for the broader war on terrorism is a predictable and long-term expense that should be in the regular budget. Steve Kosiak, a budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, call England's memo "disturbing" guidance.

"The only way to come up with $160 billion is if you take a supremely broad view of the" war on terrorism, he said. "Clearly, this does not reflect the cost of ongoing military operations."

A Pentagon spokesman said it "would not be appropriate to discuss" the services' requests.