On Iraq - testimony of Paul Wolfowitz, Joshua Bolton and John Keane before Senate Foreign Relations Committee

US Department of Defense Speeches, July 29, 2003

Secondly, the lack of surprises. The thought that on down the trail, when the enthusiasm that we now have for solving the problem lessens, and heaven only knows there may be other problems, that we have at least some idea of what is likely to be required of the American taxpayer. Now, a failure to do this is going to lead, I believe, to a lot of partisan haggling, bad surprises, whoever is president coming up with supplementals, running out of money unexpectedly. It wasn't unexpected. All of this is fully expected. And so, while we are fully expecting, let us say so.

Now, I appreciate, again and again, people will say, "well, this is unknowable." As Senator Biden said, of course it is. We don't know in our government precisely for the next five years what in the world we will spend and what kind of revenues will come in. We are surprised every day by changes of hundreds of billions of dollars of anticipation.

All I'm saying is, with regard to Iraq, however, perhaps this is not quite such a volatile, dynamic situation. And at least it offers for the fledgling Iraqi government a chance to amend the motion, to say, "These aren't the priorities that we see, and as a matter of fact we think that some revenues can come from this and that."

So I hope that--I visited with Dr. Rice at the White House last week on this idea. I've mentioned it publicly several times. I'm hopeful we can begin to fill in the blanks and take seriously this thought of a plan that we have some confidence in, the American people sort of understand down the trail what we are doing.

I will not burden you with asking for a further comment, because my time has expired, and I want to pass that along to somebody else. But I've just taken this five minutes to make the point. And I visited a little bit with Mr. Bolten about this prior to the hearing, and he knows the regard I have for him and the work at OMB. And that is so critical, working with you at the Pentagon and working with State, working with NSC, working with our total government.

I thank you all for your testimony, and I turn now to my distinguished ranking member, Senator Biden.

SEN. BIDEN: I want to try to ask a couple very specific questions, and if you could help me by giving as quick an answer as you could.

Mr. Bolten, what are your working assumptions, on the cost side, for the rest of '03 and for '04 for Iraq?

MR. BOLTEN: For the rest of '03, Senator Biden, the--on the cost side, our working assumptions are those that Ambassador Bremer has brought back to us. He's anticipating expenditures in the range for the total of '03 of about 7.3 billion (dollars). And what that--

SEN. BIDEN: How much will you be requesting for the remainder of the year, if any, from the United States Congress to fund that need?

MR. BOLTEN: We don't anticipate requesting anything additional for the balance of this year.

SEN. BIDEN: What do you anticipate for '04?

MR. BOLTEN: I don't know the answer to that. Ambassador Bremer is--has laid out a reasonably specific budget for the balance of '03, and I think he had an opportunity to discuss that with you. But even that was relatively crude, because of--they're just getting a handle on so many of the variables that are in play right now.