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The following document is from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/03/23/MN204798.DTL
Bush team sets war cost at $80 billion
Estimate comes after Congress has OKd budget
Dana Milbank, Mike Allen, Washington Post
San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, March 23, 2003
Washington --
President Bush plans to tell congressional leaders on Monday that the
war in Iraq will cost about $80 billion, administration officials said, three
days after both chambers of Congress passed budget plans and authorized tax
cuts without a war-cost estimate from the administration.
For weeks, White House officials refused to provide a cost estimate, saying
they could not account for the various war scenarios. But officials said
Saturday that on Monday, Bush plans to tell congressional leaders he will ask
for additional funding of about $80 billion.
The figure, which has ranged between $70 billion and $90 billion in last-
minute deliberations, includes about $60 billion for combat and the first
months of reconstruction, with the rest going to foreign aid, homeland
security and humanitarian relief.
Administration officials were still working on the war-spending request to
be shared with lawmakers, with Bush aides debating exactly what to include and
whether to break it into several smaller requests.
Bush has not formally signed off on the size of the package but is expected
to give his approval during a meeting before he talks to the congressional
leaders, the sources said. The full details of the proposal could be presented
to Congress as early as Monday.
The White House plan to release a war-cost figure comes after Democrats
expressed annoyance at the administration's refusal to provide them with
estimates, even classified ones, of the possible costs of the war and its
aftermath under various scenarios.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., said Tuesday that he found
it "preposterous" for the Senate to debate next year's budget when "this big
question mark hangs out there, totally unaddressed." To cover possible war
costs, the Senate voted to set aside $100 billion of the $726 billion tax cut
Bush has proposed.
Administration officials said that they wanted to have the flexibility to
scale back the request if the regime did not resist, and said that providing
information about the cost would have sent signals about the scale of their
plans that would have complicated efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution.
The cost of the war has been a subject of speculation inside and outside
the administration for months. Last fall, Bush's then-economic adviser,
Lawrence Lindsey, put the cost at $100 billion to $200 billion. In January,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put the military costs at "under $50
billion." Pentagon officials last month suggested a range of $60 billion to
$95 billion for the war alone.
Bush, asked about estimates during his news conference on March 6, doggedly
refused to discuss specifics but called the benefits of the then-potential war
as "immeasurable -- how do you measure the benefit of freedom in Iraq?"
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