|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
White House Eyes Bomb Resistant Vehicles NewsMax.com Wires WASHINGTON -- The White House will soon forward to Congress a request for $5.3 billion for bomb resistant vehicles, a top Pentagon official told a House panel Tuesday. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England told the House Budget Committee that the request for the vehicles - whose V-shaped undercarriages deflect roadside bomb blasts - will help keep production lines humming at full capacity. The funding comes on top of $5.6 billion already approved for 6,400 mine resistant vehicles and will be added to the Pentagon's $141.7 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The additional money would help pay for those vehicles and purchase another 1,520 of them. England said other costs, especially President Bush's ongoing strategy of increased troop levels in Baghdad and Anbar province, will require additional funding, since Bush has not asked for funding past September for the so-called surge in operations. England couldn't say how much additional funding will be needed, though he acknowledged a mid-September report from Gen. David Petraeus will have a great bearing on the budget for the war. The House Appropriations Committee has already approved more than $4 billion for the bomb resistant vehicles as part of a $460 billion Pentagon funding bill slated to pass later this week; the White House originally requested just $400 million. The House defense measure is slated to pass later this week, but a separate war funding bill won't get under way until the fall.
Story Continues Below
Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas said the passage of the regular Pentagon funding measure would enable war operations to continue into next year. There will be money left over from $173 billion already appropriated for the ongoing budget year and the Pentagon has flexibility to use non-war funds for military operations. All told, Congress has appropriated $602 billion for military operations, foreign aid and other costs related to Iraq, Afghanistan and the war or terror, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that total, $533 billion has gone to the Department of Defense. Stepped-up military operations are costing about $12 billion a month, with Iraq accounting for $10 billion per month, according to a prior congressional analysis.
© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Print Page 
Forward Page 
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2009 NewsMax.Com |