Defense comptroller defends funding for Iraq, Afghanistan

Under tough questioning Monday from Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee members, Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim maintained that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are fully funded through the end of this fiscal year, and that additional money will not be needed until well after the presidential election in November.

Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said he was concerned that the department will struggle to make ends meet until Congress likely approves an estimated $50 billion fiscal 2005 supplemental spending package next March. Zakheim reiterated that the department has ample funding in fiscal 2004 to last until that time, but that if a supplemental is not approved in the second quarter of fiscal 2005, money could get tight.

Senate Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., asked why funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was not requested in the president's fiscal 2005 budget, and also chastised Zakheim for citing inaccurate historical figures regarding the department's reliance on wartime supplemental requests to fund the Vietnam War. Zakheim said 1970 was the last year the Pentagon appropriated operational funding for the war in its annual appropriation request, but Byrd noted that they were included in the spending bills for fiscal 1971, fiscal 1972 and fiscal 1973 as well.

"What you said earlier doesn't square with the facts," Byrd said.

Zakheim yielded to Byrd's figures, but insisted that costs associated with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are "unpredictable" and that it would be difficult to estimate such costs prior to two "watershed situations" -- the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq in June and upcoming presidential elections in Afghanistan.

"Both of those will be a significant factor in what is the American military presence, posture, force level in fiscal 2005," Zakheim said.

Stevens also questioned a $700 million fiscal 2004 shortfall in the Defense Health Program that resulted from cost demands associated with the global war on terrorism. Zakheim acknowledged the shortfall, and said the department plans to reprogram fiscal 2004 funds to pay for it. Stevens asked why the health program shortfall was not funded with money appropriated in the department's Iraqi Freedom Fund, a discretionary spending account included in the fiscal 2003 and fiscal 2004 supplemental spending packages, over which Congress has little control.

Zakheim said IFF funds in fiscal 2003 had been exhausted and that of the $1.9 billion included in the fiscal 2004 IFF, only $400 million remains. He also asserted that the IFF is intended to pay for costs directly associated with ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the money could not be used to cover shortfalls in other areas, including the Defense Health Program.

Stevens was also concerned that defense spending now is a smaller percentage of the economy and federal budget than it was during the Vietnam era. He noted that, in 1969, the defense budget was 8.9 percent of the gross national product and 43.4 percent of the national budget while today it is around 3 percent of the GNP, and roughly 18 percent of federal spending. Stevens acknowledged that these figures are projected to increase to roughly 6 percent of GNP and 20 percent of the budget over the next several years, but he remained concerned over the current trend in defense spending.

"I am worried about the trend in terms of being able to maintain the kind of a military we need if we're going to not restore the concept of committing a sufficient amount to our defense," Stevens said.