Haley Stevens: “I strongly oppose Senator Dorgan's amendment. The Secretary of Defense has testified that the cost for this last month…”

“I strongly oppose Senator Dorgan's amendment. The Secretary of Defense has testified that the cost for this last month was $3.9 billion in Iraq and $900 million in Afghanistan. As was stated, we provided, in a supplemental, $62.6 billion in late April. By the time it was available, it was May. And $30-plus billion, as the Senator said, went to pay costs that had already been incurred in moving our forces to Iraq. But the Senator's proposal would instruct the President to submit a fiscal year 2004 budget amendment for the cost of the war in Iraq. Congress has not and should not instruct the President to submit such an amendment. As a matter of fact, Congress should not instruct the President to request funds now for future contingency military operations. We have opposed that concept in the past. We have not done it, and we should not start now. We only need to review the recent history of financing military contingencies to know this would be a dangerous precedent. Just take into account that the number of times the Congress has directed a President, any President, to submit a budget to pay for future operations is zero. We did not do it in Desert Storm. We did not do it in Somalia. We did not do it in Haiti. We did not do it in Bosnia. We did not do it in Kosovo. We did not do it in Afghanistan. And we should not do it now.”