Increase In War Funding Sought - Bush to Request $70 Billion More

[Roland99]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62554-2004Oct25.html

The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.

White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized that final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made until shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not happen until early February, when President Bush submits his budget for fiscal 2006, assuming he wins reelection...

...Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus estimated that in inflation-adjusted terms, World War I cost just under $200 billion for the United States. The Vietnam War cost about $500 billion from 1964 to 1972, Nordhaus said. The cost of the Iraq war could reach nearly half that number by next fall, 2 1/2 years after it began.

A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment. "We are going to let OMB talk for the administration on this issue," Marine Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch said.