Senate passes spending bill; war's cost: $200 billion-plus
WASHINGTON — The Senate gave final passage yesterday to an $82 billion emergency war spending bill, sending President Bush a measure that will push the cost of the Iraq invasion well past $200 billion.
Even with such massive expenditures, Army officials and congressional aides say more money will be needed as early as October. Army Materiel Command, the Army's main logistical branch, has put Congress on notice that it will need at least two more emergency "supplemental" bills just to finance repair and replacement of Army equipment.
By 2010, war costs are likely to exceed a half-trillion dollars, say congressional researchers.
The final spending measure was nearly identical in cost to the $81.9 billion request Bush submitted in February. Most of the debate in Congress revolved not around the money but around unrelated immigration measures pushed in both the House and Senate.
The bill includes a provision that would make it harder for undocumented immigrants to acquire driver's licenses that the federal government would recognize as identification.
It also would expand the list of terrorism-related activities that will make an immigrant inadmissible or deportable, tighten rules on political asylum and add federal powers to ease construction of barriers at U.S. borders.
The Senate unanimously approved the spending measure. The House approved the bill last week by a vote of 368-58.
The bill provides the Defense Department nearly $76 billion on top of $25 billion already appropriated mainly for Iraq for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.
It also contains $5 billion for foreign-policy efforts, including $1.28 billion to construct and operate a U.S. embassy in Baghdad that will be among the world's largest, $660 million for tsunami relief, $200 million for aid to the Palestinians and $370 million in relief for the conflicts in Sudan.
The overwhelming vote and the desultory debate over the mounting cost of the war in Iraq belied concerns that the war is taking a toll, both on the U.S. Treasury and the military's efforts to retool for the future. For fiscal 2005, the Pentagon has now been allocated about $100 billion for war costs, 45 percent more than it received last year. That total is nearly 30 percent of the $350 billion deficit the federal government is projected to run this year.
With Bush's signature, the government will have allocated $350.6 billion for war-related spending since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Congressional Research Service estimates.
The recently passed congressional budget resolution assumes that an additional $50 billion will be spent in 2006, but few congressional aides thought war costs would stay that low.
Indeed, some lawmakers are pressuring the administration to rein in supplemental requests, especially for items that could hardly be viewed as emergencies. The latest emergency bill includes $5 billion to help reorganize and equip the Army into smaller "modular" brigades, a move announced in 2003.
Members of Congress complain that the emergency process denies lawmakers oversight powers and keeps Iraq costs off the deficit projections for future years.
"It's dangerously irresponsible," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., warned in February.
Although support was overwhelming for the current package, some members said it is the final straw. "We all know what's being done," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "There's greater and greater resistance."
"We're fighting a war on supplementals, and it's a hell of a way to do business," said retired Army Lt. Gen. John Riggs, who until last year was working on the Army's modernization plans.