Democrats: No blank check for Iraq war.

This is from wiredispatch.
I have never heard Obama complain about military spending overall. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. It seems as if the Democrats might be willing to grant blank checks for the Afghan war! Anyway they do not seem to have been successful at cutting budgets for the Iraq war.



No 'blank check' for Iraq war, Democrats say
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed: US can't afford GOP strategy of writing blank checks for Iraq war
ANDREW MIGAAP News
Jul 26, 2008 15:16 EST
Sen. Jack Reed says America can't afford the Republican strategy of continuing to write blank checks for the Iraq war.



"At a time when the war in Iraq costs $10 billion each month, Americans are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, and our economy is struggling, we cannot continue down the path that President Bush and Senator McCain propose: writing blank check after blank check," Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said Saturday in his party's weekly radio address.
Reed said Democrats have outlined a better plan to carefully redeploy combat troops out of Iraq and give them missions such as counterterrorism and training Iraq's military.
"Make no mistake: This is a plan that seizes on the progress and sacrifices our troops have made in Iraq, and it recognizes the desire of the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny," he said.
Reed and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska accompanied presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on a six-day trip to Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait that ended this week.
Obama says he will pursue a 16-month timetable for withdrawing combat troops if he is elected. That idea won conditional support on Monday from Iraqi leaders during talks in Baghdad.
"Our proposal to responsibly redeploy American troops out of Iraq will send a message to the Iraqi government that it must do more," Reed said. "And it will encourage more progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency."
A West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, Reed emerged as one of his party's leading anti-war voices after he voted against authorizing the war. Reed, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a potential vice presidential pick for Obama.
"Some of the soldiers and Marines we met in the field are on their third and fourth tours of duty," Reed said. "And they deserve a policy that is worthy of their sacrifice."
Source: AP News

Bush won't ban Permanent Bases: Pushes for Iraq Oil Law

Whether there are permanent bases or not is a rather academic matter since the current bases are likely to be there indefinitely. Some are obviously set up in such a fashion as to be there for quite some while. The huge U.S. embassy complex is not about to be closed unless there is a violent overthrow of the U.S. backed government.
The Oil Law has been languishing in parliament for a year now pending some agreement between the Kurds and other parties. The Kurds have gone off on their own signing their own agreements with third parties much to the annoyance of the central government.


Bush Won't Ban Permanent Bases : Pushes For Iraqi Oil Law
by Aaron Glantz
Global Research, February 2, 2008
IPS - 2008-01-29
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 29 (IPS) - President George W. Bush signed a 696-billion-dollar Pentagon spending bill immediately before his State of the Union address Monday night, which funds all Defence Department programmes not directly tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, expands health care for injured veterans and gives U.S. soldiers a pay raise.The bill is a mixed bag for peace activists, since Bush added a so-called "signing statement" saying he would ignore provisions that ban permanent military bases in Iraq and forbid the use of U.S. troops to exercise United States control of Iraq's oil resources. Congress tucked many contentious policies into the spending bill, knowing President Bush would have to sign it to keep the military from grinding to a halt. Among them is a Wounded Warrior bill designed to improve the quality of medical care for U.S. veterans. Washington's answer to the scandal surrounding poor care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, it was championed by politicians and presidential hopefuls across the political spectrum from Democrat Barack Obama to Republican John McCain. "This is a tremendous victory for veterans, so that we do not leave any more behind to fall through the cracks," said Paul Sullivan, director of the group Veterans for Common Sense. The Pentagon reports more than 68,000 U.S. soldiers have been wounded, injured, or stricken ill in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals and clinics have treated over 260,000 patients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. On top of that, the VA has reported nearly 250,000 disability claims from veterans of the two wars. Studies show as many as half of the 1.6 million soldiers sent to fight in Iraq will return with post-traumatic stress disorder and a fifth are returning with traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage often caused by roadside bombs. Sullivan says the most important aspect of the legislation President Bush signed Monday is a provision guaranteeing every veteran free VA health care for five years after returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. "Right now, veterans only receive two years of free health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and due to the long delays at the VA, those two years often expire before the veteran can receive treatment from a doctor," he told IPS. "In some cases, when a veteran has traumatic brain injury or a psychological condition related to the war, it may be six months or two or even three years until the condition gets serious enough for the veteran to even want to go to the VA for health care. Now, with this five years of free health care from the VA, our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans can rest a little more assured that when they show up at the VA they will be treated right away with high quality VA doctors," he said. President Bush didn't approve the entire bill, though -- he used a signing statement to say he wouldn't follow four provisions of the act, which he said "could inhibit the president's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations." Those provisions would have mandated increased Congressional oversight of military contractors, banned construction of permanent military bases in Iraq and forbade the use of U.S. troops to exercise United States control of Iraq's oil resources. Antonia Juhasz of the group Oil Change International told IPS the issues of oil and permanent military bases are related. "We've got the Bush administration pushing aggressively for an (Iraqi) law that would give oil companies 20- to 25-year contracts for oil in Iraq and if they were to be at work for an extended length of time, they would need security," she said. "If the U.S. military is going to stay in Iraq for 20 or 35 years, they're going to need bases," she added. Juhasz said President Bush's signing statements show the futility of the Democrat's main approach to the war issue -- which is to continue approving funds for the war while simultaneously trying to extract concessions from the administration. A Congressional Budget Office report released last week showed the Democratic Congress appropriated more money for the Iraq war in 2007 than Republican Congresses did in years past. "The bottom line has to be in the willingness to give the money," she said. "The budget for the war this year has reached 170 billion dollars for just the next year. That is an astounding amount of money. The increase in spending on the war is largely caused by the surge and of course the power of the purse is the only power that the Democrats have." Some observers are looking forward to January 2009, when George Bush's eight years in office will come to an end. But James Paul of the Global Policy Forum says there's plenty the Democrats can do this year to slow or stop the conflict. "If this is something that counts, then surely they have a pretty strong mandate," he said. "I suspect there are problems that will go beyond January 2009 and this issue is not going to go away any time soon -- even if George Bush is out of office," he added.
Global Research Articles by Aaron Glantz

Keeping troops in Iraq for 1.5 years. 800 dollars for very American

The continued tax cuts and cuts in social programs will simply increase the divide between rich and poor in the US. I imagine most Americans would prefer the 800 dollars to be spent on something other than the war in Iraq.


Bush Budget Hikes War Funding
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

Friday, February 2, 2007







(02-02) 19:14 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --


Keeping troops in Iraq for another year and a half will cost nearly a quarter-trillion dollars — about $800 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — under the budget President Bush will submit to Congress Monday.


Bush will ask for $100 billion more for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior Pentagon official said Friday. Those requests come on top of about $344 billion spent for Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.


At the same time, Bush's budget request will propose cost curbs on Medicare providers, a cap on subsidy payments to wealthier farmers and an increase to $4,600 in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students.


Bush's proposal, totaling almost $3 trillion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, will kick off a major debate with the new Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats are sure to press for more money for domestic programs, and they've signaled they won't consider renewing Bush's tax cuts until closer to 2010, when they are to expire.


The White House plan will produce a surplus in 2012, budget director Rob Portman said Friday — assuming strong growth in tax revenues, continued curbs on domestic agencies' spending and relatively modest cuts to farm programs, Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.


Bush's plan assumes Congress extends the two rounds of tax cuts that were passed in 2001 and 2003.


Portman said Bush's budget submission contains about a 1 percentage point cut in the rapid growth in Medicare — which averages almost 8 percent a year without changes — to squeeze about $66 billion in savings over five years from the federal health care program for the elderly.


Bush would curb payments to health care providers such as hospitals, and would require more of the higher-income recipients to pay greater premiums.


"We need to get these unsustainable growth rates under control," Portman said, noting that Congress passed more ambitious cuts in 1997, when President Clinton and a GOP-controlled Congress enacted more than $160 billion in Medicare savings. "This is a good first step."


However, Congress has since given back much of the 1997 savings, particularly cuts in doctors' fees. Smaller cuts proposed last year got nowhere in a Congress controlled by Republicans.


The requests, to be released Monday, would bring war spending for fiscal 2007 to about $170 billion, with the $145 billion for 2008 representing a decline.


The additional request for the current year includes $93.4 billion for the Pentagon and $6 billion for foreign aid and State Department costs — on top of $70 billion approved by Congress in September.


The White House assumes war spending will be down to $50 billion in 2009 with none planned beyond then in hopes the war in Iraq will have wound down.


Bush's recent budgets have been met with skepticism by Democrats, partly because they have left out war costs and expensive changes to the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting an increasing number of middle class taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates updating the AMT for inflation would cost $93 billion in 2012 alone.


The increase in war spending — up from $120 billion approved by Congress for 2006 — have been prompted by large costs to replace equipment destroyed in combat or worn out in harsh conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.


The Iraq requests are certain to face scrutiny by the Democrats, who already are debating whether to try to block Bush's request to increase troop levels in Baghdad.


Critics say the Pentagon is also using war-money requests to modernize the armed services with weaponry — such as the next-generation Joint Strike Fighters or the controversial V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft — unlikely to see action in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Pentagon counters that the planes are replacing aircraft that are no longer manufactured.


The additional budget request for Iraq is far below lists assembled by the military branches, which were given a green light last fall by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. He instructed the four services that they could add projects connected to the broader fight against terrorism, though critics said that could be interpreted to cover almost anything.


Those lists were met with resistance in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and the Pentagon pared them back in the request it forwarded to the White House's Office of Management and Budget, which trimmed them further.


In addition to its share of the $245 billion for the wars, the Defense Department will seek $481.4 billion to run the department for 2008 — an 11.3 percent increase over the $432 billion amount approved by Congress for this year, according to a defense official and budget documents.


That total includes about $12 billion to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps, to meet the growing strains of fighting wars on two fronts, said the Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because the budget has not yet been released.


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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this story.