Cord Byrd: “Yesterday, the General Accounting Office released a shocking report about the state of funding for our troops in Iraq…”

“Yesterday, the General Accounting Office released a shocking report about the state of funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, our troops are running out of money. But the White House denies that there is a problem. The findings in the General Accounting Office report are alarming. The Army is overspending its fiscal year 2004 operations in maintenance funds to the tune of $10.2 billion. The Air Force urgently needs another $1.4 billion this fiscal year, and the Marines are short by $500 million. Our military is cutting back on training at the same time that retired service members are being pressed back into uniform to be sent overseas. These budget problems are being compounded by the fact that the White House planned on having only 99,000 troops in Iraq by this point instead of the 140,000 troops we will have there for the foreseeable future. This is the most astounding evidence to date that the administration has fundamentally mismanaged the financing for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The President did not bother to put a single dime, not one thin dime, in his February budget request for these wars.”