White House can't say how much a new Iraq war would cost
2 hours, 54 minutes ago Add Top Stories - USA TODAY to My Yahoo!
Laurence McQuillan USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has no estimate of the cost of a war with Iraq, and there is no planning for it in the annual budget proposal the White House will send to Congress next month, says Mitch Daniels, President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget director.
It is impossible to estimate how much a war with Iraq would cost until President Bush orders military action and pares down the options for carrying out an attack, Daniels said Wednesday.
He was quoted last month as estimating the cost at $60 billion, but aides said later that he was just answering a question by noting the cost of the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites).
The fact that there is no price tag now, even though a buildup of U.S. forces is underway in the Persian Gulf region, means Congress will craft a federal spending plan that ignores a huge expense likely to be borne by taxpayers.
Bush said Tuesday that he is losing patience with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and will disarm Iraq by force unless Saddam complies fully with United Nations (news - web sites) weapons inspections.
''Time is running out,'' Bush said.
As the budget deficit grows, Bush also is asking Congress to pass an economic stimulus plan costing $674 billion over 10 years. It would rely heavily on new tax cuts that could drain the Treasury.
Bush's military chiefs have outlined several scenarios with different levels of troop strength and kinds of equipment.
Daniels says if Bush issues an order for war and chooses a scenario, ''depending on decisions that the president made, then I think rather quickly we would have some sense of what part of a very broad (cost) range we're talking about.''
Lawrence Lindsey, who was the chief White House economic adviser until he was pushed to resign last month, said last year that the cost would range from $100 billion to $200 billion. Other White House officials rebuked him for his candor.
Leon Panetta, who was chairman of the House Budget Committee until he became budget director for the Clinton administration in 1993, says Congress was similarly in the dark about the cost of the 1991 Gulf War when it began. Estimates ranged from $20 billion to $100 billion. The final cost was about $60 billion, but other countries paid about 90% of that.
''You are going to get all kinds of estimates. . . . It all really depends on how the war itself goes,'' Panetta says. ''The one thing you can bet on is that the shorter the war, the cheaper it's going to be.''
Panetta says a new war with Iraq has to exceed the $60 billion cost of the last one because combat is likely to last longer than the 43 days of the 1991 conflict. ''It has to be more expensive than the Persian Gulf War, and that's a perfect example of a quick and fast action.''
Although U.S. allies agreed in advance to share the cost of the 1991 war, Bush's current plan has not won the widespread support that the first Gulf War did.
''This is one that's going to fall right in the lap of U.S. taxpayers alone,'' Panetta says.
Daniels declined to discuss whether the United States would pay most of the bill this time.
He acknowledged for the first time that even without a war, he expects annual federal deficits of $200 billion to $300 billion the next two years and beyond. He blamed the projected shortfalls on a weak economy and the war on terrorism. As recently as July, the White House predicted deficits of $109 billion this year and $48 billion in 2004. |
