Cord Byrd: “from the moment our military first attacked Osama bin Laden's hideouts in Afghanistan, through the time that our first…”

“from the moment our military first attacked Osama bin Laden's hideouts in Afghanistan, through the time that our first soldiers set foot inside Iraq, continuing right up until the present day, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have been entirely funded by what the American people might call a series of stopgap spending measures. These measures, which are called emergency supplemental appropriation bills in the parlance of our Nation's capitol, take the form of last-minute requests by the White House for Congress to approve tens of billions of dollars on an accelerated timetable. From September 11, 2001, until today, Congress has approved $201 billion in these appropriations bills, the great majority of which the President has applied to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this bill on the Senate floor is approved, it will add another $79.3 billion to that staggering total. With the cost of the two wars approaching $280 billion--that is a lot of money; that is your money, Mr. and Mrs. American Citizen--the American people are beginning to ask how much more will these two wars cost our country? The Congressional Budget Office estimated, in February 2005, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost the American people $458 billion over the next 10 years. The $74.4 billion in military spending contained in this supplemental appropriations bill is but a small downpayment on that staggering sum.…”