Yahoo! News - Bush to Seek About $80 Bln for Military Operations
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration is seeking about $80 billion in new funding for military operations this year in Iraq and Afghanistan pushing the total for both conflicts to almost $300 billion so far.

Administration and congressional officials said the new request, expected to be announced on Tuesday, would come on top of the $25 billion in emergency spending already approved for this fiscal year.

That means funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will total nearly $105 billion in fiscal 2005 alone -- a record that shatters initial estimates of the cost.

Wonder how much health care we could buy for the American people with $300 billion? I sure would love to see an accounting of the money spent so far, becuase apparently it didn't go into equipment for the troops.

John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said the Pentagon might need even more money this year "because we just don't know the rate at which the insurgency will grow or subside, and we don't know the rate at which the Iraqi security forces can be stood up."

The funding request is expected to be formally submitted to Congress after President Bush sends up his fiscal 2006 budget on Feb. 7.

Oh, I forgot. This doesn't actually count as "money spent". Silly me.

The White House is bracing for a backlash from Democrats and some Republicans. At nearly $105 billion, total funding for military operations in 2005 would be more than 13 times larger than Bush's budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.

We need more figures like this, something to strike a comparison in the public's mind, especially after domestic programs at home take a huge hit in the upcoming budget. It's hard to grasp the enormous amount of money without a frame of reference.