The U.S. Air Force has asked the Pentagon for $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal year 2007, an amount nearly half the annual budget, according to defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. The request is likely to draw criticism from lawmakers who are increasingly worried about the huge sums being sought and approved off budget. Such funding is not subject to the more rigorous congressional oversight of regular budgets. Another source familiar with the Air Force plans said the extra funds would help pay to transport growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thompson, who has close ties to U.S. military officials, said the request was fueled in part by a memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, which called for the services to broaden the range of emergency costs to include the longer war on terror, not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This amount of money is so much bigger than the Air Force would normally request in a supplemental appropriation that it hints at a basic breakdown in the process for planning and funding war costs, Thompson said. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will decide on the supplemental funding requests on November 15, according to the England memo, reported by Inside Defense last week. With the latest bill passed last month, Congress has approved about $507 billion in spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, under some 13 emergency spending requests. Thompson said Rumsfeld was clearly challenging Congress. Rumsfeld is playing budgetary chicken with Capitol Hill. Congress is saying it s time to stop doing budgeting outside the regular process, and the secretary is saying, Well, give us the money we need to defend the nation, Thompson said. In recent months, top military officials have called for more defense financing, arguing that current spending as a percentage of gross domestic product is lower than during other wars.
