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02/07/2006:

"IRAQ'S CIVIL WAR HAS COST $3,000 PER U.S. FAMILY-- SO FAR"

LOS ANGELES -- God forbid critics of the war on Iraq should compare it with the war in Vietnam. But perhaps it is worth mentioning that the liberation of Iraq is now costing more each month than the preservation of the Republic of South Vietnam did more than 30 years ago.

As the admitted direct cost of the war reached $250 billion last week -- and the White House asked for $120 billion more on Thursday -- new analyses estimate that the invasion of Iraq could end up costing $2 trillion before it is over.
news.yahoo.com


Bush's Budget Bolsters Pentagon
President Bush yesterday proposed a $2.77 trillion spending plan for the coming year that drains money from two-thirds of federal agencies, continues a large military buildup and predicts that the federal deficit this year will far eclipse the previous record, reaching $423 billion.

In the White House budget for the fiscal year ending in October 2007, Pentagon funding would increase by nearly 7 percent and, for the first time in Bush's presidency, claim more than half the government's expenditure on discretionary programs, those that get set each year. The $439.3 billion that the plan devotes to the military is 45 percent greater than the Pentagon budget when Bush took office five years ago.

The only other parts of the government to reap substantial increases under the proposal are the departments of State and Veterans Affairs and activities related to homeland security.

In comparison, the White House is recommending a reduction of $2.2 billion in government operations that are unrelated to the nation's security -- a 0.5 percent cut whose practical effect is magnified when inflation is taken into account. Eleven agencies would receive less money than they did this year, with the deepest cuts to the Transportation, Justice and Agriculture departments.

Taken together, the budget's patchwork of generosity and austerity reflects the priorities of Bush, who has defined his administration's central goal as combating terrorist threats in the United States and abroad ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As a side effect, Bush sought in the early years of his administration to slow the growth of many domestic programs; last year and again in the budget released yesterday, he has sought to cut many of them outright.

The budget also makes it clear that the White House is mindful of twin political objectives: not forcing Congress to make too many hard spending choices in an election year, and taming the deficit to satisfy conservatives, who complain that Bush has presided over a rapid expansion of federal spending in the past several years.

White House officials assert that the new budget remains on a path to meet a goal the administration set two years ago to cut the deficit in half -- as a percentage of the country's economic output -- by 2009. To accomplish that objective, the budget envisions that Congress annually will make politically difficult cuts in domestic programs after next year, while reducing spending on Medicare, Medicaid and agricultural programs. In addition, the budget includes no money beyond next year for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.