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 The $5.3 billion request for the vehicles -- whose V-shaped undercarriages deflect roadside bomb blasts
-- will help get production lines humming at full capacity.
The funding comes on top of $5.6 billion already approved for 6,400 mine-resistant vehicles and will be added to the Pentagon's $141.7 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The additional money would help pay for those vehicles and purchase an additional 1,520 of them, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the House Budget Committee.
Procurement of mine-resistant, ambush-protected, or MRAP, vehicles that have been saving lives in roadside bomb attacks has been a politically sensitive issue, with Republicans and Democrats alike demanding the Pentagon do more to protect troops from roadside bombs.
Congress has led the way in funding the MRAPs, the latest White House request coming only as the House is about to take up a huge Pentagon funding measure containing more than $4 billion for them. The White House requested just $400 million in its February budget.
The requests brings the budget for Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2008 budget year to $147 billion, said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who chairs a spending panel responsible for the Pentagon and Iraq war budgets. But that figure is likely to jump to more than $170 billion, Murtha said, citing the rapid pace of Pentagon spending in Iraq.
For instance, the new bomb-resistant vehicles are being airlifted to Iraq
-- instead of being shipped
-- at a cost of $120,000 each, Murtha said. "They'll be out of money very shortly after Oct. 1," Murtha said.
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 England acknowledged other costs, especially those associated with President Bush's strategy of increased troop levels in Baghdad and Anbar province, will require more money, since Bush has not asked for funding past September for the so-called surge in operations.
England couldn't say how much additional funding will be needed, though he acknowledged a mid-September report from Gen. David Petraeus will have a great bearing on the budget for the war.
The $460 billion House defense measure is slated to pass later this week, but a separate war funding bill won't get under way until the fall in what promises to be a major clash between Democrats and the White House over the war.
Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas said passage of the regular Pentagon funding measure would enable war operations to continue into next year. The Pentagon has flexibility to use non-war funds for military operations, but Congress is not expected to pass the bill by that time.
All told, Congress has appropriated $602 billion for military operations, foreign aid and other costs related to Iraq, Afghanistan and the war or terror, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that total, $533 billion has gone to the Defense Department.
Stepped-up military operations are costing about $12 billion a month, with Iraq accounting for $10 billion per month, according to a previous congressional analysis.
[Associated Press;
by Andrew Taylor]
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