{"id":621,"date":"2004-02-11T22:07:23","date_gmt":"2004-02-12T03:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/02\/supporting_our_troops\/"},"modified":"2004-02-11T22:07:23","modified_gmt":"2004-02-12T03:07:23","slug":"supporting_our_troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/supporting_our_troops\/","title":{"rendered":"Supporting Our Troops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahhh, those bothersome budgets<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The military will have no money to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for three months beginning Oct. 1 because the White House is declining to ask Congress for funding until December or January, well after the presidential election.
\nArmy Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee the $38 billion he has for 2004 war operations will last only until the end of September, as he spends $3.7 billion a month in Iraq and about $900 million a month in Afghanistan. The Army has about 114,000 soldiers in Iraq and roughly 10,000 in Afghanistan.
\n“I am concerned on how we bridge between the end of this fiscal year and when we can get a supplemental in the next fiscal year,” Schoomaker told the committee.
\nThe fiscal year — the government’s spending year — runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 annually. Funds for 2004, therefore, run out Sept. 30, 2004.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a bit confused by the matter:<\/p>\n

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday the decision not to request a supplemental rested with the White House. He could not explain why the administration would allow a three-month gap in funding the war on terror, ostensibly its top priority.
\n“They have so many factors to consider. They have to look at all the departments and agencies. I don’t know — they’ll certainly know a lot more,” Rumsfeld said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, Mr. Secretary, this is just a shot in the dark, but the cynically-minded trash trollers might view this as a budget ploy to forestall adding more red ink to our record election-year budget deficit.
\nBut I’ve got good news. I’ve figured out a way to save money in Iraq without shortchanging our Halliburton national investment. Instead of just charging the hospitalized U.S. troops for food, we can simply require all<\/i> the soldiers to pay for food. And gasoline, and ammunition, and the other supplies–make this a self-funded mission. That way Bush can run his war campaign, the wealthy can keep their tax cuts, the deficit won’t be so large, and the troops will have an opportunity to be extra patriotic. Everyone’s a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahhh, those bothersome budgets: The military will have no money to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for three months beginning Oct. 1 because the White House is declining to ask Congress for funding until December or January, well after the presidential election. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told the […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}