In this post I stated that Congress would not reserve oversight over the $25 billion that George has requested for Iraq. Examining the particulars of the defence bill the House sent on to the Senate yesterday I think that common doubt is much closer to becoming fact.
Bush’s $25 billion, likely just a first installment, is slightly more than the $21 billion increase proposed for overall defence spending in this record-setting bill. Couching George’s additional billions in support-the-troops gestalt is unoriginal and hardly unexpected.
The House bill, generally mirrored by the Senate version, includes an across-the-board 3.5 percent pay raise for military personnel and raises the hazardous pay for troops facing hostile fire from $150 to $225 a month. It also increases separation pay for those stationed overseas and improves health care programs for reservists.
The hazardous pay increase should be deja vu for those who experienced its brief implementation then roll back last year. The Army Times described as “maddening” the “Pentagon’s opposition to two congressional proposals to continue higher rates of imminent-danger pay and family-separation allowance beyond Sept. 30, when raises put in effect in April” were set to expire. The White House referred all criticism of the paycut to the Pentagon who called the increase a “budget-buster.”
No doubt there are economists figuring how the 3.5 percent across-the-board increase in pay will stand-up in relation to the financial beating service people took last year including a $200 million cut in the program that provides assistance to public schools serving military bases; a tax cut “which failed to extend a child tax credit to nearly 200,000 low-income military personnel; a $1.5 billion reduction in his 2004 budget, to $9.2 billion from $10.7 billion, for military housing and the like; and a cut of $14.6 billion over 10 years in benefits paid through the Veterans Administration.”
As for the proposed increase in health benefits I’ll hold my enthusiasm until those who routinely monitor VA spending issue a report calculating the cost of reservists requiring long-term health care and disability services into the overall budget. I suspect they’ll find the entire system and its clients will fare poorly as these additional costs are absorbed most especially over the long-term.
The only mention of retaining oversight of George’s personal cache is this:
The White House issued another veto threat over language in the House bill that would restrict Pentagon flexibility on “competitive sourcing,” or contracting some Pentagon jobs out to private companies.
If there’s been any serious action taken by Congress since this familiar scenario played itself out during the pseudo-haggling over 2003’s $87 billion ransom note I’ve yet to notice it. In other words, here’s your money king George. If the subjects get restless we’ll relay DeLay’s pronouncement on the matter, “No one can question the need to fund our troops to keep them strong and victorious,” and with the help of Limbaugh, etc., slay your detractors by slathering them with cliched slanders and treasonous bile.
I don’t expect voters will get riled about funding bunker busters to the tune of $36.5 million, though they should.
Finally, the most prophetic parts of this budget that require lenghty debate but likely won’t generate it. You have a body of legislators “courting” a presidential veto by claiming to support delaying military base closures in the United States for two years. They are also requiring “that the Army add 30,000 troops over the next three years and the Marines 9,000.”
Yet “the planned shift of 3,600 2nd Brigade troops to Iraq later this summer” from South Korea is indicative that the former is already in motion. According to proposals in this Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study–prepared at the request of the Senate Budget Committee– which U.S. Forces Korea officials claim to have not read and Pacific Command officials have refused to comment on, it would seem the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to expand bases overseas while closing facilities here in the United States as Congress confabulates. It’s a fascinating study that belies the Pentagon’s claims their desire to close U.S. bases is cost effective. The true savings would come by bringing the troops home. All else carries higher costs with negative returns.
And I’m left wondering if the requirement that the Army add 30,000 and the Marines, 9,000 is doable without a draft.
But what does it matter, right? There are Bush detractors and America-haters to slay. Off with their heads!