I appreciate General Casey’s candor in his testimony before the committee. I know I am frustrated with the lack of progress by the Iraqi government on the benchmarks and I know this frustration is shared by many of my colleagues. The army is doing a great job and is keeping up its end of the bargain, but the Iraqi Government is failing to live up to its commitments.

I took this opportunity to express to General Casey my frustration with how the war has been funded to date. While some costs cannot be quantified ahead of time, we do know that we will have a sizeable presence in Iraq for the near future. Much of this funding that we can predict and expect should by now be included in the budget. If the Administration had instituted responsible budgeting practices for some of the war costs there would be little opportunity to use a delayed supplemental to threaten that soldiers might be without needed resources.

Secretary Gates has said that much of the war costs should be put within the budget and its time for the Administration to do so. They will provide a new budget to Congress in just 75 days and its time for it to reflect the true costs of the war.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Foreign Policy, Lawmaker News, Politics .