Bush budget makes military

Washington, Feb 5: President George W Bush tomorrow will seek 245 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while boosting other military spending and curbing domestic programmes, setting the stage for a big battle with democrats over funding priorities.

Democrats newly in control of Congress have pledged careful oversight of the hefty proposals for Iraq spending.

And as details of Bush's fiscal 2008 budget spill out into the media, Democrats took aim at expected proposals to wring savings from children's health care and other domestic programmes.

Bush has pledged to balance the budget in five years and is adamant about his aiming of extending his tax cuts that Democrats have called fiscally irresponsible.

But he acknowledged the looming budget debate at a conference yesterday of House of Representatives Democrats.

''Some of it you'll like, some of it you won't like,'' he said of his budget.

Speaking on CNN today, White House budget director Rob Portman confirmed that Bush will ask Congress for 100 billion dollars more for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the fiscal year 2007 that ends in September.

He will seek 145 billion dollars in war spending in 2008 and forecast 50 billion dollars in expenditures for Iraq in 2009, Portman said.

The war spending for 2007 will mark the highest annual level since the invasion of Iraq nearly four years ago. The total for this year of 170 billion dollars includes the 100 billion dollars request and 70 billion dollars that Congress already appropriated.

'Serious oversight' Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid highlighted media stories of the numbers to highlight reports of past misspending in Iraq and to promise 'serious oversight' of the newest request.

''America has already spent almost 400 billion dollars on this war, too much of which has been wasted on boondoggles like Olympic-sized swimming pools in unused multimillion dollar training camps in the desert,'' said Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Portman said corrections had been made. ''We believe we have the controls in place to do a better job going forward,'' he told CNN.

Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, also sent Bush a letter on Friday asking him to boost funding for a health program for children that has been cited in the media as targeted for proposed reductions.

Meanwhile, an administration official who has been briefed on the numbers said the president will seek to boost the Pentagon's regular budget by 10.5 per cent to 481 billion dollars.

The 2008 spending plan which will total 2.9 trillion dollars would also hold discretionary nondefence spending to a one per cent increase, according to the official who was contacted by Reuters and spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to preempt Bush's announcement.

The proposed rise in domestic spending would mean a cut in programmes after accounting for inflation, which is running at 2.5 per cent.

Bush will also seek 96 billion dollars in savings over five years from mandatory programs like the Medicare health programme for the elderly, the Medicaid health programme for the poor and farm subsidies, the official said.

He will aim to reduce the growth of Medicare by 66 billion dollars over five years and Medicaid by 12.7 billion dollars. Some savings would be achieved by curbing payments to hospitals and other providers.

REUTERS