Air Force said to seek $50 bln emergency funds

[ECH1969]

The U.S. Air Force is asking the Pentagon's leadership for a staggering $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal 2007 -- an amount equal to nearly half its annual budget, defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute said on Tuesday.

Another source familiar with the Air Force plans said the extra funds would help pay to transport growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Spokeswoman Maj. Morshe Araujo gave no details on the new request, saying it would be completed only next week. She said the service had already mapped out an expected supplemental funding request of $50 billion for fiscal 2008.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will decide on the supplemental funding requests on November 15, according to the England memo, reported by Inside Defense last week.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-10-31T195049Z_01_N31154342_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-BUDGET.xml

[juajen]

1. Emergency funds for a year in the future?

What am I not getting? Looks to me as if they shouldn't have even spent any of 2007's money yet. Unconscionable.

[kimmerspixelated]

2. WTF????

I think this is important, not to shrug over. Methinks there is something awful brewing-planned-I tell you- planned!

[denverbill]

3. Let's see. Assuming it costs $100,000 per wounded/killed soldier,

which seems a tad exorbitant, that would pay to move 500,000 soldiers.

I guess I didn't realize we'd had more casualties than WWII already.

[MindPilot]

13. Did you see the 60 Minutes story about the medical units in Iraq?

After looking at those flying hospitals--airborne ICUs in many cases with surgery being performed in-flight--I'm going to guess that $100K per wounded soldier is a REAL conservative figure.

One doctor when asked how much would be spent on a wounded individual before they returned stateside, didn't really have a firm answer, but suggested when pressed that a million was a conservative estimate.

And not all of those being evacuated and treated by our military are members of our military--a lot are Iraqis.

[saigon68]

4. PIGS SWILLING AT THE TROUGH

Good thing there are no seniors in pain tonight

Because they can't afford their drugs

[DURHAM D]

5. So - Iraq is to U.S. as Afghanistan was to U.S.S.R. n/t

[liberal N proud]

6. How many flights on AF 1 is that at $60,000/Hour?

[lovuian]

7. Thats ridiculous they are pocketing the money

Unbelievable!!!

[gratuitous]

8. Oopsie, the request isn't supposed to be completed until next week

Good thing there's nothing much happening between now and next Tuesday so the major media can focus on this startling request like a laser beam. Now, what is the Air Force up to that they'll need half again as much money as they're currently budgeted for?

[krispos42]

9. And 'only' a $250 billion budget deficit

They NEVER EVER EVER include the supplemental "ongoing emergency" bills that tack on one or two billion dollars a fiscal year. Cuz that Iraq was just come out of NOWHERE every year, don't ya know?

[SpiralHawk]

10. k & r because this has the stink of republicon crony corruption

Kommander George AWOL Bush is up to something stinky, as usual, I suspect

[daleo]

11. We knew there were lots of dead and wounded soldiers

But $50 billion just to transport them? That's some "mission accomplished".

[haele]

12. 50 billion for MAC?

Actually, that sounds reasonable if they're expecting additional casualties and are in the process of modernizing - or privatizing - their system. If this is to fund a contract with multiple requirements and, say, three follow-on years, this is not unusual.
They've probably got to pay for some extensive maintenance costs (the current MAC fleet is rather old and most of the planes are probably needing major overhauls), rental of additional planes (many of their planes are actually rented from various U.S. airline reserve fleets), communications, power, and other structural upgrades, adaptation of transport configuration to medical support configuration, additional manning, additional administration and management costs to the Air Force and any other activty/service/contractor that may be involved...

And if they're privatizing, even more costs.

Haele

[hayu_lol]

14. We've had no info on what happened at Falcon Base...

no casualty count, no damage assessment, could this be partly to rebuild whatever was damaged. Who/which company will do the rebuilding with a no bid contract?

[haele]

15. It's possible that there's some skim...

But there can't be that much; from my experiance, the government can only transfer so much "designated" money to other projects once it's been awarded; if most of this money is for MAC operations or other transport operations, the majority (at least 90%) will end up on MAC or transport contracts, not frittered off to rebuilding ammo bunkers. Perhaps a runway or two with a couple of hanger facilities, but not a ammo bunker. There's way too many regulations and audits on designated supplimental spending to be able to just toss cash around.

Yea, KBR or Bechtel will probably get an initial chunk of change out of this.

Haele.

[NanceGreggs]

16. Maybe they should ask Halliburton for a loan ...

... I understand that thanks to this war, Halliburton is SWIMMING in money -- and they'd probably only charge 225% interest on the funds.

[Laelth]

17. Methinks there's more to this story.

This isn't for the wounded. This is emergency funding to pull out the entire American occupation army. We're leaving Iraq. It seems we have no choice. We lost.

-Laelth

[TexasLawyer]

18. $50,000,000,000.00

That's a lot of money!

Too bad our school has a hole in the roof, but there ya go!