Defense Budget Doesn't Include Funds For Iraq, Afghanistan NOW HOW IS IT POSSIBLE HE COULD BE SERIOUS ABOUT LEAVING OUT THE CURRENT BUSH WARS?????????because he is AFRAID OF THE TRUTH
By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Monday 02 February 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bush is asking Congress for $401.7 billion in military spending for 2005,
including huge outlays for new manned and unmanned aircraft, advanced ships, missile defense and
precision weapons.
The proposal represents a 7 percent increase over fiscal 2004.
American military budgets have increased steadily for the past six years. The Bush administration
plans for military spending to grow $20 billion a year over the next five years. The current
defense-budget proposal projects that spending will reach $487.7 billion by 2009.
The 2005 proposal represents 3.6 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to
Pentagon estimates. Defense spending is up from 2.9 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2000, but down
from 8.9 percent during 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, according to Pentagon figures.
Spending is also down from 6 percent of GDP during the military buildup of the Reagan administration,
according to Pentagon figures.
Noticeably absent from next year's request is money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
White House budget director Joshua Bolten estimated that another $50 billion would be needed to
cover those costs next year. The White House expects to cover the war costs with supplemental funds
after next fall's elections.
The budget sets aside a 3.5 percent pay hike for troops and $74.9 billion in new weapons. Another
$68.9 billion is earmarked for research on futuristic projects including a laser satellite system,
space-based radar and cruise missile defense.
Weapons procurement is weighted heavily in favor of new planes and other aircraft, including $11
billion for the controversial F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, all
of which have had cost overruns in recent years. The Osprey had a series of fatal crashes and almost
was scrapped.
Unmanned aircraft such as the Predator, which was used successfully in Afghanistan, Iraq and
elsewhere, would receive nearly $2 billion in funding, a 32 percent increase over last year. The
Pentagon also plans to spend $1.6 billion on satellite and laser-guided bombs, Tomahawk missiles and
other precision munitions, all of which have been used heavily in combat operations since the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks.
The budget includes $9.2 billion for missile defense, a $1.5 billion increase over fiscal 2004. Bush's
plan calls for deploying up to 20 ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska and California and another
10 ship-based interceptors by the end of calendar year 2005.
Critics argue that missile defense hasn't been tested adequately and isn't ready to deploy. A report
by the congressional General Accounting Office last year warned that anti-missile system technology
hadn't been proved to work, and many critics warn that deploying the system could spark a new arms
race.
"Sanity does not seem to have a lot of influence on the decision," said Christopher Hellman, a
military analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. "It's a totally unproven
technology."
Pentagon officials said the president's proposed military budget would meet the demands of the war
on terrorism and also would help make the armed services a lighter and more lethal force.
Some defense analysts disagreed.
"It seems that there are a lot of leftover Cold War weapons programs that are still being funded in
this budget," said Marcus Corbin, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a policy research
organization in Washington. Examples include the F-22, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Comanche
helicopter.
With federal deficits already ballooning, other critics say Bush's plan to increase defense spending
may be unrealistic.
"One of the most significant questions is whether or how long this (amount of spending) is
sustainable under the broader fiscal picture, which doesn't look very good," said Steven Kosiak, an
analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, another Washington policy-research
group. "If history is any guide, if and when Congress decides to take on the deficit issue, then defense
will be among the first to be hit."
The Air Force comes out the winner in next year's defense plan, with a 9.6 percent increase in
funding. The Army would receive only a 1.8 percent increase, the smallest of any service.
Near-Sighted Deficit Plan Ignores Problems Down the Road, Skeptics Say
By Edmund L. Andrews
New York Times
Tuesday 03 February 2004
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — In offering a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009, President Bush
ignored more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts and spending commitments that come due shortly afterward.
Mr. Bush is projecting that the deficit will hit a record $521 billion this year, then decline to about
$237 billion over the next five years.
But that estimate excludes most of the cost of making his tax cuts permanent, most of the costs of
the Medicare prescription bill and all of the costs of keeping American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
beyond this year.
Budget analysts said Monday that the five-year goal would itself be difficult to achieve. The cost of
maintaining American military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $50 billion in 2005 alone, even
if the number of troops there declines by one-third.
But by laying out a 5-year plan rather than a 10-year one, as Mr. Bush did until deficits began to
soar, the administration has pushed many of the biggest fiscal challenges outside its budgetary
"window."
All told, Mr. Bush has proposed more than $1.1 trillion in additional tax cuts over the next decade.
The biggest proposal is a permanent extension of most of the tax cuts he has pushed through
Congress in the last three years. Of that $1.1 trillion, only about $175 billion would occur between now
and 2009. The rest, nearly $900 billion, would not take effect until the end of this decade — after the
end of a second Bush term.
The five-year deficit-reduction goal also excludes soaring costs of paying for prescription drugs
under the new Medicare law. The administration now estimates those costs will total more than $530
billion over 10 years, but two-thirds would come due in the second 5 years.
"If you look at fiscal policy, it looks like an exploding cigar," said Robert Bixby, director of the
Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that lobbies for greater budgetary discipline. "Focusing on just
the next five years ignores all the exploding costs in the out years. It is much too narrow a focus."
Mr. Bush also refrained from addressing the looming issue of the alternative minimum tax. The
minimum tax was designed to prevent wealthy taxpayers from taking excessive advantage of
sophisticated tax shelters, but the tax is not adjusted for inflation and is expected to cause big tax
increases for millions of moderate-income families if it is not changed.
On Monday, Mr. Bush ordered the Treasury Department to come up with ideas for reforming the
minimum tax. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cost of avoiding unwanted tax
increases would be more than $400 billion over the next 10 years. Instead of dealing with that issue up
front, the administration proposed a temporary fix that would last two more years and would cost only
$23 billion.
Mr. Bush's short-term goal will not be easy to achieve in itself. The new budget assumes that
discretionary spending outside of defense and domestic security will be almost frozen at current levels
for the next five years. But conservative and liberal budget analysts said Monday that such
assumptions were unrealistic. Mr. Bush has allowed discretionary spending to rise much faster than
that in the last three years, and Congress will be pushing to do so again.
"They have a reasonable number in the first year, but then there are really low or no increases after
that," said Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the Cato Institute, a research group in Washington
that favors reduced federal spending. "The problem is that Bush doesn't really have a plan for that
happening. It's phony."
Conservative Republicans in Congress have become much more incensed about rising government
spending in recent months, particularly after reluctantly supporting the expansion of Medicare. But
fiscal conservatives complain that Mr. Bush has yet to veto a spending bill, while liberal critics
complain that he continues to push for tax cuts.
William Gale, a budget analyst at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Bush had implicitly made his
deficit-reduction goal easier by projecting a surprisingly high budget deficit of $521 billion this year.
Under the current budget plan, Mr. Bush can fulfill his deficit pledge even if the government has a
shortfall of $237 billion in 2009. By contrast, the administration's budget plan last year proposed
reducing the deficit to $190 billion by 2008.
Mr. Gale, of the Brookings Institution, said the administration could reduce the budget deficit by
almost half over five years by doing nothing — no new spending increases and no additional tax cuts.
Even if Mr. Bush persuades Congress to freeze nondefense discretionary spending for the next five
years, budget analysts say, that would have little impact on the line of deficits that lie ahead.
Mandatory spending in the nation's three big en ment programs — Medicaid, Medicare and Social
Security — is expected to climb by $366 billion over the next five years.
Administration officials agree that the most difficult fiscal challenges by far have to do with long-term
en ment programs. Mr. Bush recently called for a partial privatization of Social Security that would
allow people to divert some of their contributions to private investment accounts. But he did not propose
any changes to rein in en ment programs, and he supported expanding Medicare to pay some
prescription drug costs for the elderly
"You have to ask yourself, where can they make changes that are sufficient to afford a reduction in
deficits?" said Nigel Gault, the United States research director at DRI/Global Insight, a consulting firm
in Lexington, Mass. "I don't see how you get the deficit down without raising somebody's taxes. I don't
know whose taxes, but it's got to be somebody's." |
