The government should stop deceptively pretending that war costs are separate from the Pentagon's

February 10, 2007
The government should stop deceptively pretending that war costs are separate from the Pentagon's budget

Here's how the supplemental shell game works. The official defense budget for 2008 comes to $481 billion. That's a 10% increase over last year and a 62% increase over 2001. And it conveniently fails to include a supplemental request of $141.7 billion, which brings the 2008 defense total to $622.7 billion. On top of that, the president requested a 2007 supplemental in the amount of $93.4 billion, bringing this week's entire defense "budget authority request" to $716 billion (the
figure of actual outlays is even higher because it includes billions already committed to the
Pentagon).

So why abuse supplemental appropriations? Because Congress and the president have discovered
that they are an effective way to discreetly increase spending for a long and painful war. As
important, supplemental spending does not count against budget caps or automatically trigger
offsetting cuts. Thus, the Pentagon can have money for the war while keeping space available in
the regular budget for pet projects.