Eager to show support for American troops fighting overseas, Congress is on the verge of setting aside up to $50 billion in emergency spending to help pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars next year.
But as much as 5 percent of that fund may not go for war costs at all, according to outside budget analysts. Instead, they say, Congress is using the emergency bill, known as a bridge fund, to rescind cuts that it proposed in the Pentagon’s regular budget.
That shift of programs to the bridge fund is just one of the behind-the-scenes maneuvers in what critics call the shell game that is the Pentagon’s 2006 budget, which lawmakers are finishing now. That game has gotten more elaborate with Congress facing competing pressures to fund two wars and cut a burgeoning federal budget.
“It’s just become a budget gimmick on steroids,” Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said of the cuts rescinded via the emergency fund. “It just gives them a chance to take those costs off budget.”
Congressional leaders defend the emergency war funding. Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), chairman of a House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on defense, said the additional money will provide essential military equipment, whether the funding was shifted from the regular Pentagon budget or not.
“We were very careful,” Young said. “What we included in the House budget fund was strictly for fighting the war on terror, equipment that our presently deployed troops need, such as armor for Humvees, armor for bodies and ammunition.”
The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have cost more than $350 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, and the White House is expected to ask early next year for another special payment.
The House and Senate each have approved a version of the 2006 defense spending bill. The Senate version is about $390 billion, not including spending on the wars. The House provides $409 billion, excluding $45 billion for war funding. They are now negotiating a final version.
But the Iraq and Afghanistan emergency fund is not the only place the so-called shell game is playing out.
About $10 billion to pay for veterans’ medical costs has disappeared from the Senate version of the bill, for example. Instead it has been foisted on the U.S. Treasury, allowing the Senate to claim its version of the Pentagon budget is $7 billion below the White House request of $397 billion.
OMB said to be frowning
A congressional source said the White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to block that money-moving, which has gone largely unnoticed.
“My guess is that you will never hear a peep about this as they debate the bill,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer and author of “Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security.”
Congressional negotiators and the OMB declined to comment on the defense bill until the House and Senate agree on a final version, which could be in the next few weeks.
The growing tab for hurricane relief has some in Congress suggesting a fresh look at Pentagon spending. But it is difficult to make a dent in the defense budget once both sides have signed off on it. The budget document has several hundred pages and reflects billions of dollars of hard-won compromises over military operating costs, weapons purchases and special projects for particular states and congressional districts.
In the Senate, the Pentagon spending bill sailed through earlier this month by a 97-0 vote. The House version passed 398-19 in June.
Both versions provide much of what the White House asked for, including full funding for premier weapons programs such as the F-22 fighter jet, the C-17 cargo plane, the Marines’ V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
This year, both the House and Senate tried to beat the White House to the war-funding punch by approving the emergency fund.
While that might look like good planning, budget watchdogs say it’s also a chance for Congress to stretch the definition of “emergency” and use the extra money for purchases that have little or nothing to do with the war.
“It’s invisible. . . . It doesn’t go through the normal vetting process,” said Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. His group estimates that more than $3 billion in non-war spending has found its way into war funding in recent years, including such items as expansion of a wastewater plant in Pennsylvania and forest road maintenance in California.
A recent study by Wheeler, the former Senate staffer who now works for the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, notes that the Senate cut $343.8 million in Army depot funding, some of which is used to maintain combat vehicles and equipment, and some of which is used for other things. But then the money reappears at a higher level of $1.4 billion in the emergency fund.
The Senate also cut $56 million from $680 million in upgrades to the Army’s Apache helicopter, Wheeler’s report states, then restored $98 million in upgrades in the emergency bill. An additional $447 million in cuts to operating expenses across the service, Wheeler found, appeared again in the emergency budget.
A House leader’s defense
Young said some of those shifts may reflect a conscious decision to move military items from the annual budget to the emergency war fund. House leaders, he said, kept pork out of the emergency funding, limiting it to items requested by the military.
“There are no so-called earmarks, where members come in and ask you for something,” Young said. “That was our position, and the members understood that.”
Still, the attempt by Congress to pre-empt the administration’s war spending could end up costing more in the end.
Although the administration has yet to ask for its 2006 war funding, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts will cost $85 billion in 2006. Young said recent discussions with administration officials suggest that those costs could be even higher, though he declined to name a figure.
If so, some fear, Congress could end up paying some 2006 war costs now–and then paying the administration’s full request later.
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shedges@tribune.com
