Iraq Spending With Tax Cuts Is Unaffordable

"We can't do it all," said Lee Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former Democratic member of the House. "From the president's speech, I haven't seen the hard recognition of the economic costs of this decision. I don't think he gave us a picture of how he intends to pay for his foreign policy."

Yet as the projected federal budget deficit for 2004 exceeds $500 billion, officials have not changed their assessments of the United States' fiscal health or the White House's economic plans. Just days before he disclosed his Iraq spending request Sunday, the president demanded that Congress pass hundreds of billions of dollars in additional tax cuts.

"The purpose . . . is to hold the president accountable for a failed policy, not to cut off funding," said an aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who will try to bar any of the money from being spent until the administration issues a detailed report on its long-term plans for Iraq.

Bush's $87 billion figure is the largest emergency spending request since the opening months of World War II, according to Pat Towell, a defense fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.