Administration Offers Breakdown of $87 Billion Request

Administration Offers Breakdown of $87 Billion Request

NewsMax.com
Friday, Sept. 19, 2003

According to documents sent to Capitol Hill by the Bush administration, $20 billion of its requested $87 billion is slated for reconstruction efforts in Iraq – only a portion of the $50 billion to $75 billion estimated as necessary for rebuilding over just the next four years, according to a report in the LA Times.

The lion’s share of the $87 billion, about 75 percent, is slated to fund the ongoing military operations in Iraq. However, even that staggering sum will fund the U.S. troop presence for only an additional 12 to 15 months. Military operations cost about $4 billion a month in Iraq.

Other details of the $87 billion breakdown:

Sixty-six billion dollars is slated for combined military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fifty-one billion dollars of that $66 billion is slated for military operations in Iraq.

Eleven billion dollars is earmarked for military operations in Afghanistan.

Of the $20 billion the administration is seeking for reconstruction efforts, $3.71 billion is slated for public works; $875 million for rehabilitation of irrigation systems and restoration of marshlands; $470 million for construction of houses and public buildings and repair and reconstruction of roads and bridges, and $835 million for transportation and telecommunications.

Eight hundred million dollars is reserved for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

An administration spokesman said that the bottom line could be mitigated by a projection that Iraq may be in a position to begin contributing $5 billion a year starting in 2005 from surplus oil revenues. The official, however, conceded that before that largesse would become available, there would be significant expenditures to rebuild that nation’s oil infrastructure.

Also in the picture are a number of countries that will be seeking to claim future oil revenues to offset billions of dollars in bad debt owed them by Iraq.

According to the Times report, the same official described a campaign underway to convince other rich nations and international lending agencies to contribute $30 billion to $55 billion to mitigate the bill.

The anonymous official added that the job of persuading wary allies is "not going to be easy," according to the report.

Although the funding request is expected to win congressional approval, there are questions being raised on the Hill as to whether Iraq should repay some of the $20 billion in reconstruction aid.

To deal with that and other issues, the Senate Appropriations Committee plans to hear from L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator in Iraq, and Army Gen. John Abizaid, the military commander.

Both the House and Senate have targeted mid-October to get the bill to the President’s desk.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
Editor's note:
FREE E-mail Alerts From NewsMax.com - Click Here Now!