Defense Spending Needs Oversight

With the total bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan projected by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments to be as high as $1.7 trillion by 2018, President-elect Obama is being urged to bring change to the Bush administration's booming defense spending. The root of the problem? Bush's decision to fund the wars via so-called "emergency spending measures" as opposed to appropriations requests. "The process has reduced the ability of Congress to exercise effective oversight. It has also tended to obscure the long-term costs and budgetary consequences of ongoing military operations," the CSBA's report says.