What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Special Issue: the Collapse of America
Paul Craig
Roberts gives CounterPunchers the definitive data on what is
happening to jobs in America. Not just blue collar jobs. Middle-class,
white collar jobs. Roberts'
stunning probe is the first true picture of what the U.S. economy
is fast becoming and of the savage class wars that lie ahead.
Plus Mike
Ferner on what it really means to investigate war crimes in Iraq. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers
each month! But
remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the
print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
The Bush administration has circumvented
a significant law, passed by Congress in 2004. The legislation
required the president to report by January 2005 on the costs
of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the future years, 2006
to 2011. On May 13, 2005, the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) reported that such a report was impossible to write for
any fiscal year more than one year in advance.
However, testimony at a July 18 hearing of Congressman Chris
Shays', R-Conn., Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging
Threats, and International Relations of the House Government
Reform and Oversight Committee revealed that no one ever asked
the responsible official in the Defense Department to estimate
the likely costs of the war: neither before the war was begun
(when senior officials were dismissing others' estimates), nor
in response to the statutory requirement.
There is a reasonable claim that costs for any future event is
full of uncertainties, however, many have dealt with them in
an analytically straightforward fashion. Using clearly articulated
criteria for two different scenarios, CBO estimated the costs
of future operations in Iraq.
One scenario assumed U.S. military personnel in the Persian Gulf
region would be reduced to 140,000 in 2007, and the deployments
would end in 2009. The additional costs for that scenario came
to $202 billion.
The second scenario would reduce forces to 170,000 in 2007 and
40,000 in 2010; U.S. deployments would end in 2016. Costs would
be $406 billion, above the amounts already spent.
What the Bush administration was unable, rather unwilling, to
reveal - CBO has analyzed.
It remains to be seen what, if anything, Congress might do about
the administration's non-compliance with the statute.
Another important matter addressed at the July 18 hearing involved
the timing and nature of executive branch requests for funding
for the wars, such as they have existed. There are two issues;
one attracted much attention at the hearing; the other attracted
none.
Discussed at much length at the hearing was the administration's
habit of submitting budget requests for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan that are either too late or too little. The former
come in the form of "supplemental" appropriations requests
submitted in the middle of fiscal years. Congress often takes
its own sweet time to enact these, and as a result the Defense
Department has been forced to raid its own non-war accounts to
transfer dollars needed immediately for war spending (called
"cash flowing"). The "cash flowing" invariably
causes the postponing or cancellation of regular DOD activities.
This may be very ill-advised, especially if postponed training
activities, are never rescheduled for units going to Iraq.
The other form of war funding comes in the form of "bridge
funds," which are provisions added to annual DOD appropriations
bills to make money available at the start of a fiscal year.
These funds are sometimes, but not always, requested by the
president, and they are routinely inadequate to support combat
operations for more than a few months. Also, like supplementals,
bridge funds are accompanied by the scantest justification materials
from the Defense Department, and sometimes none at all. Congress
is left quite literally in the dark about what to provide funds
for, a vacuum it is frequently happy to fill with favorite
but unnecessary even irrelevant spending items (otherwise
known as "pork").
A pernicious element to both the supplementals and the bridge
funds is that they are designated as "emergency" funds
a specific budgetary term that means the money is exempted
from the spending "caps" that Congress imposes on regular
annual appropriations. The "caps" are intended to
restrain spending and keep annual deficits under control. Technically
for spending that is not just urgent, but also "unforeseen,
sudden, and not permanent" (as defined in OMB and congressional
guidance for budget matters), "emergency" funding in
effect provides an escape valve for big spenders on Capitol Hill
and in the Pentagon.
In past years, the Pentagon has included in the "urgent,
unforeseen, not permanent" emergency budget, requests of
billions of dollars for programs that do not qualify: items such
as the Army's longstanding reorganization costs, known as "modularization."
Other Pentagon requests in war budgets have the same appearance,
but because congressional oversight is so feeble in the Armed
Services and Appropriations Committees the legitimacy or ill-legitimacy
of these requests is tricky to identify.
Congress exploits "emergency" spending designations
similarly. It transfers billions of dollars in non-emergency,
non-war DOD programs from the "capped" regular DOD
appropriations bills to the emergency war accounts. According
to OMB, the House Appropriations Committee thusly transferred
$2 billion in its new 2007 DOD Appropriations bill, and it looks
like the Senate Appropriations Committee is transferring even
more in its version of the same bill. These shady transfers
permit two things:
1) Congress pretends it is
cutting DOD appropriations bill and is being "frugal,"
while it is really only transferring the spending from one account
to another. (Doing so also has the negative consequence of displacing
billions of dollars of spending intended for the wars with non-war
programs transferred from the regular bill.)
2) Congress routinely also replaces some, but not all, of the
money transferred away from the non-emergency, capped, annual
spending bill with "pork." Some amount of cutting
is preserved so the pretense at savings can be made, while, in
fact, spending is actually increased. (The net total of the
transferred spending and the pork plugged back into the annual
bill will exceed the amount Congress pretends that it "cuts.")
Needless to say, it was the
congressional abuse of emergency funding that attracted not a
single word of comment at the July 18 hearing.
Conclusion
One might expect howls of protest that the Bush administration
gave the back of its hand to a statutory requirement to estimate
the future cost of the wars. But to expect any such protest,
let alone enforcement of the law, is to misunderstand Congress
as it currently exists. Today's Congress is not the guardian
of taxpayers dollars, assiduously watching how every pinched
penny is being spent. Instead, Congress is happily joining the
Pentagon as a co-abuser of its own appropriations process.
There are some members of Congress who have the decency to notice
and remark upon the transgressions. However, those erstwhile
reformers can expect their lamentations to be completely ignored
unless and until they decide to take action to give real meaning
to their complaints.
Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military
Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information and author
of The
Wastrels of Defense. Over 31 years, he worked for US Senators
from both political parties and the Government Accountability
Office on national security issues. He can be contacted at: winslowwheeler@comcast.net.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
