THE Defence Department has spent more than $12-billion on the war against terrorism since last September, the Pentagon’s chief financial officer told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The Pentagon already has committed to spend about $14-billion of the $17,4-billion Congress provided for the
anti-terror campaign shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Defence Department Comptroller Dov Zakheim said. President George Bush has asked for another $14-billion to fight the terror war through the end of September.
Zakheim and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee, whose chairman complained that lawmakers were being kept in the dark about details of the war’s cost. The appropriations panel hopes to send a supplemental war funding bill to the full Senate by the end of the week.
”It’s very important to have this information this week, and we won’t take no for an answer,” said the chairman, Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat.
Zakheim told Byrd that his office had sent detailed figures on war spending to committee staffers on Monday.
Byrd said he supported the Defence Department’s efforts in the war on terrorism but wanted to make sure the Pentagon did not waste any of the money earmarked for the war effort. He said some money set aside for waging recent conflicts was instead spent on ”golf course memberships, sightseeing tours, cappuccino machines and ceremonial chinaware.”
Zakheim said the war accounts have controls that ”makes it a little more difficult to push the paper,” but give officials ”more scrutiny over how the money is spent.”
Another Democrat on the panel, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, said he was concerned about the war’s effect on federal spending.
”I think it’s wrong, wrong, wrong to say that we’ve got a war on now and we’ve got to run a deficit, and by the way, the war’s never going to end,” Hollings said. ? Sapa-AP