WASHINGTON -- If re-elected, President Bush will seek an additional $70 billion in emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington Post said Tuesday.
White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made until shortly before the request is sent to Congress, which would be in early February.
If approved by Congress, total war costs would approach $225 billion. It comes on the heels of three earlier emergency spending bills approved by Congress in support of the war. In August, Congress approved $25 billion for the war as a bridge to the larger request the president promised for early 2005. Last October, lawmakers passed an $87.5 billion emergency spending measure that included $65 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. An additional $18.6 billion of that money went to Iraqi reconstruction.
The Iraq war has proven so costly because of the unexpectedly intense opposition from insurgents, forcing the Pentagon to keep far more troops in Iraq than it had planned, the newspaper said.
