Military officials defend budgeting for Iraq, Afghanistan

Senate Democrats on Tuesday challenged the military services' top civilian officials on their inability to estimate fiscal 2005 costs associated with operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and questioned the Pentagon's ability to pay for those two continuing operations with fiscal 2004 funds.

During a hearing, Senate Armed Services ranking member Carl Levin, D-Mich., asserted that the president's fiscal 2005 defense spending proposal is a peacetime budget because it lacks funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. He also said Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker's February testimony to the panel caused concern among lawmakers over the impending gap in funding between the end of fiscal 2004 and an anticipated reprieve from a $50 billion supplemental request expected in January.

Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee told Levin he was concerned with the Army's spending rate in both operations, which, according to Schoomaker's February testimony, averages roughly $3.7 billion per month in Iraq and $900 million in Afghanistan. But he added that Pentagon leaders are working to bridge the gap in spending.

"With assistance from the administration we could get to sometime early next spring to get through to a supplemental," Brownlee said. "I am assured by them that with their assistance we can make it."

Navy Secretary Gordon England said funding for deployments is included in the Navy's annual base budget, although he said the cost of sending Marines to Iraq was not accounted for in fiscsl 2004. He told Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, that the Navy's funding shortfall in fiscal 2004 stems from these deployment costs, and assured him the Pentagon comptroller will cover the shortfall. The money, he said, would likely come from the Iraqi Freedom Fund, a $1.9 billion fund included in the fiscal 2004 supplemental spending package that is rapidly dwindling, according to Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim's testimony Monday before the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Zakheim told the panel that roughly $400 million of the IFF remains.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Warner defended the Pentagon's inability to estimate the cost of operations to be conducted more than one year from now. He cited a Congressional Research Service study that examined 46 cases since fiscal 1990 in which funds were appropriated for military operations through supplemental requests.

"Can you reliably estimate the costs for your service in Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal 2005 today?" he asked the service secretaries, to which each replied that they could not.