Say Anything Blog

WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday warned that the U.S. Congress must approve additional money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of May or risk the start of Defense Department layoff notices.

“Congress needs to fund our troops by Memorial Day,” White House Budget Director Jim Nussle told the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Failure to act quickly could result in an unfortunate replay of last December, when furlough warnings were issued” by the Pentagon, Nussle added.

The Republican budget director was referring to layoff warnings for some noncombat personnel at the end of 2007, just before Congress finished work on $70 billion in additional money for the wars.

That $70 billion was a portion of about $172 billion requested early last year by President George W. Bush for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assuming Congress gives Bush the remaining $102 billion for the two conflicts this year, total U.S. war funding since 2001 would total $752 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.”

Richard Perle, chair
The Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board
July 11, 2002

“Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

Ari Fleischer
White House press secretary
February 18, 2003

“The United States is very committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid.”

Mitchell Daniels, director
White House Office of Management and Budget
April 21, 2003

“There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”

Paul Wolfowitz
Deputy Secretary of Defense

“When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community.”

Donald Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
March 27, 2003

“The costs of any intervention would be very small.”

Glenn Hubbard
White House economic adviser
October 4, 2002

“It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.”

Kenneth Pollack
former director for Persian Gulf affairs
National Security Council
September 2002

“The likely economic effects [of a war in Iraq] would be relatively small.... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.”

Lawrence Lindsey
White House economic adviser
September 16, 2002