Budget for 'Surge' Is Hill Topic

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration has not budgeted the cost of the ongoing military buildup -- which has sent about 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq -- beyond Sept. 30 because it did not know how long the increase in forces was going to endure.

"The decision was made to fund it through September 30," England told the House Budget Committee, "because we did not know . . . how long the surge would last," and "we did not know what the level of activity would be past October 1, so we have nothing in the budget."

Through Sept. 30, England said, the troop increase is budgeted to cost $6.5 billion.

Asked by Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), the committee chairman, whether there will be a supplemental funding request for fiscal 2008 to maintain the troop buildup, England responded that there will.

"There definitely will be a . . . cost because, quite obviously at this point, I mean, all those troops will not be out on October 1," he said.

"It would be physically impossible to do that," England added.

But he said the administration will delay that request "until we get more clarity in terms of exactly what the commitment will be in Iraq."

England said various Iraq assessments due in September will be considered in the decision making, including a congressionally mandated report on the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces and the administration's analysis of the Iraqi government's progress toward a series of key political and security benchmarks. Both documents will play a role, along with the conditions on the ground, he said.

When President Bush makes a decision on future strategy after the September reports, England said, "that will be the basis of our funding going forward." Meanwhile, he told the lawmakers, there are too many variables to estimate the cost of the different scenarios that could occur.

England's testimony elicited expressions of frustration from some members of Congress. "Those of us who support what we're doing still need to know how much it costs," Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) told England. "I mean, it's good practice to don't start building until you know what it costs."

The Defense Department has budgeted $141.7 billion for fiscal 2008 to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $5.6 billion for 6,400 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs). They are designed to detect and deflect blasts from improvised explosive devices, which are among the prime killers of U.S. troops.

The Pentagon's $5.3 billion 2008 supplemental request will pay for 1,520 of the MRAPs, England said. He added that hundreds of the initial vehicles are already in Iraq.

Overall, England said, the war in Iraq has cost $332.6 billion and the war in Afghanistan has cost $78.1 billion. U.S. spending includes almost $20 billion for training and equipping Iraqi security forces. Iraq itself will spend $7.3 billion on its forces this year, England noted, a sum that for the first time will exceed the U.S. expenditure on Iraq's security forces, which this year will reach $5.5 billion.

Asked to comment on the Congressional Budget Office's projection that the cost of keeping 75,000 U.S. troops in Iraq over the next 10 years could total nearly $1 trillion, England said "I don't know if that's valid or not." But he added: "I'm not sure we know what that troop level would be in a year, frankly, much less all the way out to 2017."

While the hearing, which ran for more than three hours, focused primarily on war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, it also covered the issues of contracting, waste and problems with the Iraqi government as outlined primarily by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.