Paying for Iraq and the war on terror

On 7 September, 2003, President Bush announced that he would request that Congress appropriate an additional $87bn – including $66bn for ongoing military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and $21bn for reconstruction assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request came on top of almost $70bn in additional funding for FY2003 that Congress approved last April, barely five months ago, for the war in Iraq and for homeland security. An intense and highly partisan debate has developed in Congress concerning the fiscal sustainability of the administration's policies and the degree to which the costs of the Iraq war in particular had been underestimated or downplayed by the Bush administration.