Two Unanswered Questions

Two pretty basic questions are throwing President Bush and his top aides for a loop as they push their ambitious reconstruction plan for the Gulf Coast:

1) What will it cost?

2) Who is going to pay for it?

For a White House that normally has a smooth comeback at the ready for even the most caustic queries, the response to these two straightforward questions has been notably fumbling.

Bush, who has not held a regular press conference in more than three and a half months, made a brief public appearance with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. That gave Associated Press reporter Terence Hunt the chance to ask the obvious:

Who will pay?

Bush wouldn't say.

"[Y]ou bet, it's going to cost money," he said. "But I'm confident we can handle it and I'm confident we can handle our other priorities. It's going to mean that we're going to have to make sure we cut unnecessary spending. It's going to mean we don't do -- we've got to maintain economic growth, and therefore we should not raise taxes."

And what will it cost?

"Well, it's going to cost whatever it costs."

Earlier Friday morning, press secretary Scott McClellan made chief domestic policy adviser Claude Allen and chief economic adviser Al Hubbard available for reporters' questions. Here's the transcript. Here's a heavily boiled down version:

"Q Al, where's the money coming from for this?