Chicago Tribune: Analysts see `shell game' in war fund

[deadparrot]

Eager to show support for American troops fighting overseas, Congress is on the verge of setting aside up to $50 billion in emergency spending to help pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars next year.

But as much as 5 percent of that fund may not go for war costs at all, according to outside budget analysts. Instead, they say, Congress is using the emergency bill, known as a bridge fund, to rescind cuts that it proposed in the Pentagon's regular budget.

That shift of programs to the bridge fund is just one of the behind-the-scenes maneuvers in what critics call the shell game that is the Pentagon's 2006 budget, which lawmakers are finishing now. That game has gotten more elaborate with Congress facing competing pressures to fund two wars and cut a burgeoning federal budget.

"It's just become a budget gimmick on steroids," Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said of the cuts rescinded via the emergency fund. "It just gives them a chance to take those costs off budget."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/chitribts/analystsseeshellgameinwarfund

[Tommy_J]

1. Interesting... Lets vote it up

[Spinzonner]

2. The further Enronization of America

[slipslidingaway]

3. !

[Toots]

4. I am shocked....... I tell you, shocked....

Actually I would be shocked truly if this were not the case. these guys make the Mafia look like punks....

[Inland]

5. US budgets are lies told the public.

All the action is "off budget" and in supplementals, the president can change the purpose of the spending, legally, and when he does it illegally Congress doesn't care.

Fact is, the citizens have NO idea what their government is doing, or doing with their money. It's all lies. If a private corporation had this sort of misleading accounting, the CEO, CFO, and half the accounting department would be in shackles.

[unblock]

6. as much as the reaganauts screams "waste, graft, fraud" about welfare

the military budget provides 1000 times the cover for waste, graft, and fraud.

it is a truism that waste, graft, and fraud happens where the money is. so yes, it happens in welfare, but there's so much more money in the pentagon, so there's so much more waste, graft, and fraud.

but of course, the big banana republican contributors are the warmongering defence contractors, so the have demonized any kind of prudent fiscal controls on the pentagon as simply aiding the enemy :eyes:

[twaddler01]

7. WOW

insane :crazy:

[WhiteTara]

8. kick

:kick: for exposing corruption