Dems call for Iraqi spending to be part of actual budget

Accountability:

Congressional Democrats are lobbying to add more than $36 billion to Pentagon spending for next year, an effort designed to include at least part of the anticipated cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the regular federal budget.

For three years, the Bush administration has been using supplemental spending bills to fund the wars, a procedure that excludes the burgeoning costs from deficit projections and makes the government's financial outlook appear rosier than it is, say congressional officials and budget analysts.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, raised the proposal for making war funding part of the annual budget in an internal memorandum last week. The Feb. 18 memo, sent to Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Budget Committee and Democrats on the Armed Services panel, outlined what Levin called "deficiencies" in President Bush's $441.8 billion budget request for defense for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

"This budget understates known defense costs for 2006, and the true size of future deficits, by billions of dollars," Levin wrote. "Although the exact costs of ongoing operations in fiscal year 2006 are not presently known, we have been spending significant sums -- about $5 billion per month -- in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time now, and we know these costs are going to continue past September 30th into fiscal year 2006. These costs should be planned on now."