GOP Leaders Work Out Deal on Defense Spending

With national security looming as a major issue in approaching midterm elections, Republican congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a new defense spending bill that would push the price tag for the war on terrorism above $470 billion.

The agreement on the 2007 defense appropriations bill -- expected to be approved by the full House and Senate next week -- spares Republicans the embarrassment of leaving Washington without funding the cash-strapped military.

But it marked another grim milestone for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that by one estimate have already cost two-thirds as much as the Vietnam War, which lasted more than twice as long as the current conflicts have so far.

The prolonged and difficult negotiations over next year’s Pentagon funding underscored the financial toll of war-related costs on other military-related services.

On the same day Republican leaders hammered out their agreement, advocates for military families came to Capitol Hill to talk about cutbacks in military-base libraries, child-care centers and other services for armed forces personnel and their kin.

“Our families are not whiners ... but they are worried,” said Joyce Wessel Raezer, a lobbyist for the National Military Family Assn.

“Our deployed service members want to know their families are being taken care of.”

Before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Bush administration officials repeatedly said Iraq’s oil wealth ultimately would pay for the reconstruction of the country.

Yet the U.S. government continues to bear the financial burden of the ongoing conflict in Iraq. And increasingly, reports suggest skyrocketing costs are seriously straining the military.

Senior House Democrats in recent months have spotlighted how military units in this country often don’t have enough equipment to be combat-ready and that base commanders have had to scrimp to pay utility bills.

Army officials have described cutting back on personnel travel, freezing new contracts and taking other measures to make it to the next funding period.

At the same time, congressional Republican leaders have been under increasing pressure from some of their own members not to cut popular domestic programs.

“It’s the return of the guns-and-butter debate,” said Bryan Riedl, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, referring to the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s struggle to maintain large domestic expenditures as the costs of the Vietnam War escalated.

This year, the Senate cut $9 billion from its version of the president’s proposed defense budget, in part to pay for domestic programs. The Senate vote prompted a veto threat from the Bush administration and weeks of tough negotiations.

In the end, congressional leaders agreed Thursday to cut the defense appropriations bill by $4 billion, as House leaders had proposed, bringing its price tag to $428 billion for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

Although spending breakdowns have not yet been disclosed, the deal reportedly will pay for an additional 22 C-17 military cargo planes, which may delay Boeing’s plans to close the Long Beach factory that produces the jets.

Congressional leaders plan to augment the military budget with an emergency infusion of $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That would follow a $65.8-billion emergency allocation in June and more than $50 billion in emergency funding in December, as well as other such supplements since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The Bush administration defends the system of emergency funding as necessary during wartime.

“The nature of the war on terror continues to make it difficult to predict with precision future funding needs,” Office of Management and Budget spokesman Scott Milburn said Thursday.

But the practice has drawn increasing criticism from members of both parties.

“There seems to be an unwillingness to be real,” said Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “We need to really be straightforward about what we’re funding and where it’s coming from.”