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WASHINGTON: US costs for the Iraq war will exceed $110 billion this fiscal year, approaching the record reached in the prior fiscal year, a top White House official said on Tuesday.
That amounts to more than $2 billion a week spent on the war.
White House budget director Rob Portman, speaking at a round-table with reporters, also predicted that strong revenue growth would help bring down the overall U.S. budget deficit, offsetting some of the spending on Iraq.
Asked if he thought the deficit for fiscal year 2007, which began Oct. 1, would come in below the forecast of $339 billion the White House gave in its mid-year budget snapshot in July, Portman replied, “Yes, I do.”
The White House previously had penciled in an estimate of $110 billion for Iraq war costs in the 2007 fiscal year.
“That number will end up being low,” Portman said.
Iraq war spending hit an all-time high of $120 billion in fiscal year 2006 that ended on Sept. 30. Some media reports have said the war costs for 2007 could total around $170 billion. But Portman declined to give a precise figure.
The White House is scheduled to unveil its 2008 spending blueprint in early February. Along with the spending plan, the administration will offer a fresh request for money for the war and will provide updated forecasts for the budget deficit.
Expenditures on the war are escalating even as public support for the conflict falls.
Portman declined to comment on the costs that would be involved if 20,000 additional troops are sent to Iraq in the near future. Media reports have said that option is under consideration by President George W. Bush, who will unveil an overhauled strategy for the war early in the new year.
EMERGENCY-SPENDING BILLS
Nearly four years into the Iraq war, Bush has maintained a practice of using emergency-spending bills to finance the costs of the war.
But the Iraq Study Group, a high-level panel that recommended a change in course for the war, also suggested that the Iraq war costs be included in the annual budget process to make them more transparent.
Democrats, who are set to take over Congress in January, have also pressed the administration to put the war costs into the regular budget. The White House has resisted doing so, saying the costs are difficult to predict.
But Portman said that with the unveiling of the budget for 2008, the administration will provide “more information than we have in the past” on estimates for future war spending.
In an interview with Reuters last week, incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said the practice of putting war-spending into emergency bills circumvents the oversight process used for items in the regular budget.
“That process is designed to weed out wasteful spending,” said the North Dakota Democrat, who noted that Congress had added language to a war-financing bill enacted in mid-June that requires the president to include war costs in future budgets.
But the White House had indicated that it does not necessarily see that language as binding.
Congress already has appropriated $70 billion for Iraq alone for the current fiscal year.
Reports on Capitol Hill have suggested that the Bush administration may seek a fresh package of spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan of $100 billion, which would bring the total war costs for this year to $170 billion, which would easily set a new record.
