Fiscal responsibility and priorities

Today Bush sent a request for an additional Bush seeks $25bn Iraq, Afghanistan (Sify, 5/06/04). This $25 billion is for a "contingency fund" and he has promised to submit a supplemental request for the next fiscal year. Boy am I glad to hear that! What's another $25 billion at this point when the deficit is already over $7 Trillion - see the Debt Clock for the exact amount, but it is growing at $1.87 billion per day. So we have the emergency $87 billion plus the $25 billion which brings us to $112 billion this year if I am adding correctly.

Of course one has to ask what is happening to all that money. According to Weisman and Cha in their 4/29/04 Wa. Post article Rebuilding Aid Unspent, Tapped to Pay Expenses, Bremer is busy moving $300 million that was earmarked for reconstruction to pay administrative and security expenses. Thus far, "less than 5 percent of the $18.4 billion has been spent."

Amazing, I wouldn't have thought it would have been that difficult to find rebuilding projects in Iraq. It seems that there is destruction everywhere you look. Heck, I would think that restoring water and electric systems alone would eat up that much. There are some choice quotes in this article:

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, cited "bureaucratic infighting" and a "loss of central command and control"

Sounds like what they are saying about the abuse and torture of Iraqi "detainees."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz pointed to successes in rebuilding and blamed contracting snafus for some of the delays.

What those hand-picked, no competitive bid contractors are having "snafus?" I thought that the whole process was a "snafu."

In fact, the money that has actually been spent on reconstruction is even less - $1 billion - though $2.3 billion has been approved. $1 billion out of $18.4 billion! But the picture is even more grim than that:

So far, occupation officials have reassigned $184 million appropriated for drinking-water projects to fund the operations of the U.S. Embassy after the provisional authority is dissolved June 30. An additional $29 million from projects such as "democracy building" were reallocated to fund the U.S. development agency's administrative expenses.

And more diversions may be coming. Armitage said the State Department still faces a shortfall of $40 million to $60 million in embassy operating funds this year. And embassy construction and operations could consume as much as $2.5 billion in fiscal 2005, none of which has been requested by President Bush.

You will all be glad to know that the missile defense shield is coming along nicely (This Time It's Real: An Antimissile System Takes Shape, Glanz, NYT, 5/04/04). You know, the one that is going to protect us from terrorist attacks? The project will only cost about $10 billion a year for the next five years, and then it jumps up into the hundreds of billions.

Don't worry. President Bush is demanding "fiscal responsibility" from the legislative branch. They must use restraint or that deficit will get out of control (gasp). So what is on the chopping block? Housing Subsidies for Poor Threatened by Aid Cuts (Chen, NYT, 5/04/04). It seems that Bush has issued a policy change retroactive to January 2004 to only pay out $1.9 million in rent vouchers. This will effect at least 9-- of the 2500 agencies nationwide that issue low income rent vouchers. (To hell with the agencies, what about the folks who no longer have vouchers for their rent?) According to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the shortfall could run into the hundreds of millions.

Yeah, let's be fiscally responsible shall we? Let's get our priorities straight. We must have space-based weapons and "star wars." We must have lots of money for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan (though it is getting spent for other things). We must have the money to hire all of those private contractors for "security" and "interrogation." So what if we squeeze a few bucks here and there from education, or health care, or housing, or environmental protection, or even from assisting states to actually prepare for disasters (like terrorist attacks). Somehow an appeal from Bush on fiscal responsibility doesn't ring quite true.

Posted by rowan at May 6, 2004 8:52 PM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |