The U.S. Senate wisely voted Tuesday to reject over half of President Bush's proposed tax cut, thus reducing the likely budget deficit to some degree. This prudence is especially appropriate in the face of an administration request for an initial $75 billion for what now appears to be a more-difficult-than-expected war in Iraq.
Watching the administration and the two houses of Congress consider the elements in a budget is a little like watching a carnival shell game. The only outcome that is sure is that taxpayer money will be spent. Tuesday's Senate action was no exception, but at least under its terms there would be more revenue to pay for programs.
Cards on the table included the administration's regular 2004 budget proposal. It includes $2.2 trillion in spending for this year and a $726 billion tax cut over 10 years. The result would have been an estimated $1 trillion deficit over the next five years, pushing the national debt up to over $7 trillion. The administration had hoped that proposal would have been acted on by Congress before it had to put on the table an additional request for money to pay for the war.
That strategy lay behind months of reticence on the part of the administration on the subject of how much the Iraq war was going to cost. Mr. Bush's approach in that regard was successful to a degree in that he did take the country to war without having had to state in advance the likely price.
Numbers that bounced around on the cost of the war ran from $25 billion to $200 billion. The question of how much the war will cost the United States was also dependent on the issue of the involvement in the war of allies, who might have been willing to pay a large part of the costs of this war as they did in the first Gulf war.
Another non-American piece remaining in the cost-of-the-war puzzle is the issue of the involvement of the United Nations in the postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq, assuming victory. The Bush administration has been unenthusiastic about U.N. involvement in postwar governance of Iraq, given the U.N. Security Council's refusal to approve a new resolution authorizing force against Iraq.
Money is also involved in the issue of postwar governance of Iraq. Contracts are already being let to American companies looking to profit from the postwar reconstruction effort. One of these is Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, to which the Army has already awarded the contract for restoring Iraq's oil wells. Halliburton and the Army have both so far declined to reveal the amount of the contract.
In any case, assuming that the tax cut halved by the Senate is not increased again in the wrangling before a final budget is approved -- a big "if" -- at least the war will not be paid for entirely on the tick. It does not make sense to run up the budget deficit and the national debt to fight this war. That logic applies whether one considers it to have been a necessity at this time, as Mr. Bush does, or whether one believes diplomacy should have been given more time, as this newspaper does.
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