Insanity:
Bush seeks emergency funds for wars, hurricanes
By Vicki Allen
The White House said on Thursday it would ask Congress for about $70 billion in new emergency funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and seek another $50 billion for those wars early in fiscal 2007.
The Bush administration also said it would seek a further $18 billion for the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast and $2.3 billion to prepare for a possible avian flu epidemic.
The new war funds would come on top of the $320 billion the White House budget office said has been allocated for the wars so far, pushing costs since the start of the wars through early next year to about $440 billion.
Congress in December sent President Bush $50 billion to fund the wars until this next supplemental is passed, which will probably be early this spring.
White House budget deputy director Joel Kaplan said the war supplemental proposal had not been completed, and would not provide details of the proposed spending.
In a conference call Kaplan told reporters the package would include funds for military operations, repairing and replacing worn equipment, training Iraq's and Afghanistan's own forces to eventually replace U.S. troops, and running the U.S. embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said the increased funds for equipment would include "new resources to protect our troops against road-side bombs and make-shift improvised explosive devices that have been a major source of casualties."
Kaplan described the $50 billion in emergency funds for fiscal 2007 as a "bridge fund," and said it was "not meant to be an estimate of what the fiscal 2007 requirements will be."
While the White House was not expected to formally submit its supplemental spending requests to Congress for another week or two, Kaplan said it would cite the figures in its proposed fiscal 2007 federal budget to be released on Monday.
He said that additional spending would be calculated in the White House's deficit projections.
The $18 billion in relief for the Gulf Coast would come on top of $62 billion Congress approved last year to cope with the devastation from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which killed about 1,300 people.
The hurricane relief money would go for projects such as a veterans hospital in New Orleans and a Coast Guard project there, to help small businesses and to replenish the disaster relief fund, a Senate aide said.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), a Louisiana Democrat, said the administration had indicated most of the money would go through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has been blasted for an inept response to the hurricanes, as well as the Small Business Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"I am highly concerned that the administration's proposal, which lacks details, will put more money into dysfunctional bureaucracies like FEMA and won't adequately address urgent needs such as housing, levees and flood protection," Landrieu said in a statement. |
