The trillion dollar war?

A report issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform details how nearly $15 billion dollars has gone unaccounted in Iraq. Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California, the chair of the commitee, stated 'The Defense Department spent $1.8 billion of seized Iraqi assets with "absolutely no accountability.'

The funding for the war has reached outrageous peaks, with some experts calling the conflict the "trillion dollar war."

How is it possible that so much money (Enough to write a check for $37,500 to every Iraqi man, woman, and child) has gone into funding the war and that nearly $15 billion dollars of it has gone unaccounted for? The simple answer is Emergency Supplemental Funding. The use of emergency supplemental funding has in effect given the executive branch a way to go around requesting the funding from Congress. Emergency funding has a long history in the U.S. Eisenhower used it in the initial years of the Korean War. The same budgetary plan occurred during the Vietnam War.

From the Veronique de Rugy article in Reason:

"In 1990, under bipartisan congressional pressure to reduce the size of the deficit, President George H.W. Bush signed the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA), which exempted emergency bills from other rules of the era designed to restrain spending. The BEA allowed the government to exclude emergency spending from the deficit projections required in the annual budget. To prevent lawmakers from abusing that loophole, the law required that Congress offset supplemental spending with rescissions—that is, by permanently withholding already appropriated funds."

President Bush's plan to fund the war has consisted of manipulating the numbers to keep the money flowing with a minimum of oversight in Iraq. How this funding is of benefit to anyone other than those profiting from the war is yet to be seen.