Congress Set To Tackle Issue Of War's Cost: Estimates on Price Range Up to $1 Billion a Day
The war in the Persian Gulf seems certain to consume more than the entire ÛÏpeace dividend" that many lawmakers were hoping would help bring down the federal budget deficit.</br></br>In testimony yesterday, the head of the General Accounting Office, Charles Bowsher, said the savings hammered out in the deficit reduction agreement last October, following the decline in East-West tension, could be ÛÏtotally swamped by the cost of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.Û</br></br>Under the deficit reduction pact, Congress and the Bush administration agreed to trim )9-8 billion from projected military spending during the 1991 fiscal year that started last Oct 1. Administration sources have said that even without combat, the deployment of United States troops in the Persian Gulf would have cost about $30 billion. In a White House briefing that went relatively unnoticed on the first day of the war against Iraq, Defense Secretary Richard B, Cheney told congressional leaders that Desert Shield had already cost about $10 billion by Dec. 31.</br></br>With American soldiers engaged in combat, it will be politically difficult for lawmakers to oppose the supplemental appropriation that the administration is expected to make in a few weeks.</br></br>In an interview yesterday morning on ABCÛªs ÛÏGood Morning AmericaÛ program, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said that ÛÏobviously, the Congress is going to appropriate whatever money is necessary to see that our troops are fully armed and prepared to bring this war to the fastest conclusion possible.*