Cord Byrd: “last year, the Senate overwhelmingly approved an amendment that I offered to urge the President to budget for ongoing…”

“last year, the Senate overwhelmingly approved an amendment that I offered to urge the President to budget for ongoing military operations. Mr. President, 81 Senators agreed that the administration should include in its budget request, which is sent to Congress in February each year, an estimate of the funds needed to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sense-of-the-Senate amendment that I authored was included in the fiscal year 2004 Defense Appropriations Act, as signed into law by the President on September 30, 2003. But there was no request for funds for our troops deployed overseas in the budget that came to Congress on February 2, 2004. That budget was stone-cold silent about our troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan. It was as if the White House had no plan for how to pay our troops overseas, or how to pay for their fuel and ammunition. We sometimes hear Korea described as the forgotten war, but the President's budget forgot about the wars ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senators on both sides of the aisle realized the folly of ignoring the massive costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an act of fiscal responsibility, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee included in his mark of the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution an additional $30 billion reserve fund for the costs of the wars. The House of Representatives went even further by including a $50 billion reserve fund in its version of the budget resolution.”