TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2010


KLMNO


EZ SU THE FED PAGE


IN SESSION Ben Pershing


WALTER PINCUS Fine Print


Gauging the price tag for Afghanistan’s security


dollar figure on President Obama’s commitment, restated last week, to the long-term security of Afghanistan. Let’s start with the cost of maintaining Afghan security forces after they reach their planned goal by October—171,000 in the military and 134,000 police. John Ferrari, deputy commander for programs for the NATO training mission in Afghanistan, told reporters last week that the estimate is that $6 billion per year would be needed to sustain that overall force. According to the latest figures published by the CIA, the Afghan government takes in revenues of $1 billion a year and has expenditures of $3.3 billion. Today, that deficit is made up through contributions by other nations. But that figure does not include the costs of Afghanistan’s military and police units. As Ferrari put it, “We procure all of their equipment.We sustain them.We pay for a lot of their training.” This year, for example, the United


A


States is spending $9.2 billion on Afghan security forces and the administration has requested another $11.6 billion for the coming year, funds now tied up in Congress. About a third of that is for equipment—“about 80,000 vehicles, 175,000 radios and technical equipment, about 400,000 weapons and 146 different aircraft,” according to Ferrari. All of that is expected to cost some $10 billion by the time the full force is outfitted, he added. But the question remains, who will


pay the $6 billion a year in the future? As of now, there is no Afghan security sustainment fund. “How the international community decides to help the government of Afghanistan to fund that needs to be determined in the future,” Ferrari said. Some say compared with today,


$6 billion could be a bargain should the Afghans be able to take over their own security by 2014. As Ferrari noted, the


s the United States begins to look closely at reducing future spending, it may be time to put a


fund half the Afghan budget. . . .We are creating a [long-term military aid] situation similar to the ones we have with Israel, Egypt and Jordan.” One thing different in Afghanistan is


WIN MCNAMEEE/POOL/REUTERS


Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, visiting Kandahar Province, awards soldiers medals for bravery.


United States is now spending about $8 billion a month to maintain 98,000 American troops in Afghanistan, while the rest of the 30,000 to 40,000 coalition forces cost several billion dollars a month. “So the $6 billion per year is a very good return. . .on your investment for 300,000 Afghan security forces,” Ferrari said. Of course, the cost keeps going up.


Just one year ago, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates pointed out that Afghanistan’s national budget could not support what he then said was $2 billion needed for the country’s army and police force, which at that time was projected at a smaller size than it is today. Last week, Ferrari said, “If the president of the United States and the international community in coordination with the government of Afghanistan decide to grow to something larger than 305,000, then yes,” there will be additional costs. A year ago,Michael E. O’Hanlon, a


senior fellow and military expert at the Brookings Institution, predicted,“We are looking at two decades of supplying a few billion a year to Afghanistan.”He added, “It’s a reasonable guess that for 20 years, we essentially will have to


the presence of a major American facility—Bagram Air Field. The facility continues to grow even as the president emphasizes his goal of reducing the level of U.S. troops beginning in July. A year ago, some 20,000 American military and civilian personnel were housed there, along with major Air Force units and coalition partners. Just last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put out a “presolicitation notice” for a contractor to build the eighth of nine planned increments for troop housing “to replace expeditionary housing facilities” for 1,520 personnel. According to the notice, building the proposed facility could cost from $25 million to $100 million. The contract will not be awarded before March. What’s interesting is that the facility


is expected to take a year to build, meaning it would not be completed before April 2012. That’s less than two years before the 2014 date when Afghans are expected to take over security, with the U.S. presence reduced to training units. But is that the real plan? Back in


2008, a supplemental funding bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars contained $62 million for an ammunition storage facility at Bagram, where 12 planned “igloos” were to support Army and Air Force needs. In requesting that money from Congress, the Army wrote, “As a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements.” A year earlier, Adm. William J. Fallon, then commander of U.S. Central Command, described Bagram to Congress as “the centerpiece for the CENTCOMMaster Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia.”


pincusw@washpost.com Senators gather to dish the deficit F


resh off an election in which the ballooning budget deficit weighed heavily on voters’ minds, a huge


bipartisan majority of senators agreed last week on a tax-cut package that would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt. But two of the 81 senators who backed


that deal—MarkWarner (D-Va.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)—want it known that bipartisanship isn’t achievable only when everyone’s getting a tax cut. Chambliss andWarner are the leaders


of a new, informal gathering of senators who have been meeting periodically since the summer to discuss ways to curb the deficit. The group includes more than 20 senators, with a roughly even partisan split. They have brought high-profile guests


into their discussions, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and formerU.S. comptroller David M. Walker. What unites the group is the belief—


shared by President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission—that there is no “silver bullet” to fix the country’s fiscal woes. “The way you do it is put everything


on the table,” Chambliss said Wednesday, appearing withWarner before a group of reporters. Now that the deficit commission’s


report is out—with controversial recommendations that include raising the retirement age for Social Security and cutting military spending— Chambliss andWarner plan to introduce the report as a “legislative vehicle” early in 2011, with a goal of finding a binding compromise by the end of next year. “It is critically important to get a plan


in place in the next 12 months” before the presidential election year, Chambliss said, even if the actual implementation of the plan is another year or more down the road. Like the deficit commission’s report,


the work of the Chambliss-Warner group is non-binding. Senators need not swear any oath to join, and they haven’t vowed to stick together on any particular votes or issues. They have agreed to whatWarner called “a cease- fire on immediately criticizing each other’s ideas.” “We’re not starting with folks on the


far right or the far left taking shots at this,” Chambliss said. “We’re starting with a group that’s in the middle, and we’re growing out.” Recent Senate history is littered with


stabs at public bipartisanship, including the “Gang of 14,” which banded together in 2005 to prevent a meltdown over filibustered judicial nominations, and the “Gang of Six” on the Senate Finance Committee, which attempted to negotiate a health-reform bill last year. Warner and Chambliss bristle at any


such comparisons. “We are not a ‘gang.’ Gangs run


around Atlanta and L.A. and cause mischief,” Chambliss said. “This is a group of concerned members of the United States Senate.” Last week, more than a dozen


senators from the non-Gang took to the chamber’s floor during the tax-cut debate to speak on the dangers of the deficit. Group participants have included Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Roger Wicker (R- Miss.), RonWyden (D-Ore.) andMike Johanns (R-Neb.). Like the deficit commission,


Chambliss’s andWarner’s group also is mulling tax reform as a “byproduct” of their spending discussions.Warner noted that the two men agree on the general idea of broadening the tax base by eliminating many existing deductions, while at the same time lowering personal and corporate tax rates.


Although the recent tax-cut deal


certainly added to the debt, both men differentiated between that short-term measure to stimulate the economy and long-term efforts to address spiraling deficits—efforts that would take effect after the economy has recovered. “The term I’ve used is that we’ve got


to show we can walk and chewgum” at the same time,Warner said. The group may get an opportunity to


do that soon. Before next summer, Congress will have to take a painful vote to raise the federal debt ceiling to allow the country to borrow more money. “If we can use that as a leverage” to


get the ball rolling on a deficit-reduction plan, Chambliss said, “that’s an ideal scenario.”


Ben.Pershing@wpost.com


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