Besides demanding Iraq War money with no withdrawal timetables attached, the Bush administration has insisted on another kind of “blank check” – war spending that has more than doubled in four years while evading serious congressional oversight because it’s wrapped in “emergency” appropriations bills – a study saysThe Congressional Research Service reported that the average monthly costs to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached about $12.3 billion, $10 billion for Iraq alone, more than double what it cost to fund the war in 2004.
CRS also noted that nearly all the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has come from “emergency” spending bills that deprive Congress of the routine opportunity to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends the money.
Dozens of these “emergency” funding requests have zipped through Congress since 2001 in an unprecedented manner when compared with previous military conflicts, the CRS said. In past wars, the bulk of the spending went through the normal appropriations process.
The Bush administration’s use of emergency supplemental appropriations to fund the five-year-old war in Iraq and the seven-year conflict in Afghanistan may have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, according to the CRS, an investigative arm of Congress.
“Over 90 percent of
funds were provided as emergency funds in supplemental or additional appropriations; the remainder were provided in regular defense bills or in transfers from regular appropriations,” said the CRS report, issued in February.
“Emergency funding is exempt from ceilings applying to discretionary spending in Congress’s annual budget resolutions. Some Members have argued that continuing to fund ongoing operations in supplementals reduces congressional oversight.”
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http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/041108a.html
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