- MIAMI (Reuters) -- Despite
President Bush's promise to spend $9 billion on reconstruction contracts
in Iraq in the next several months, administration and congressional officials
said on Thursday it could take more than a year to actually pay out that
much money for projects.
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- With the reconstruction held up by an intensifying insurgency,
the administration has faced criticism over the slow pace of spending.
Just $1.2 billion has been paid out of the $18.4 billion that Bush asked
Congress to rush through last year.
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- Bush sought to counter the criticism last week by promising
that over the next several months "over $9 billion will be spent on
contracts that will help Iraqis rebuild schools, refurbish hospitals and
health clinics, repair bridges, upgrade the electricity grid, and modernize
the communications system."
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- On Thursday, as Bush prepared to debate Democratic presidential
candidate Sen. John Kerry on foreign policy, White House officials sought
to clarify the $9 billion estimate.
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- The officials said Bush was not talking about actual
spending for work on projects themselves. Rather, they said, he was referring
to the amount of money that has been "obligated" to contracts.
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- The figure promised by Bush included $7 billion already
under contract but not yet spent on the ground, officials said. Another
$2 billion worth of contracts would be added within the next several months.
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- But spending the full $9 billion on the ground in Iraq
will take time -- anywhere from 15 to 30 months, based on Congressional
and administration estimates.
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- "The tendency to exaggerate is great. The war isn't
going the way people said it was going to go," said Donald Abenheim,
a war historian and an expert on defense matters at the Hoover Institution
at Stanford University.
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- Congressional aides in both parties have reacted skeptically
to the $9 billion figure, saying there was no way to spend that much money
that quickly given the current violence in Iraq.
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- So far, the White House says $7.144 billion in reconstruction
funding has been obligated, meaning binding contracts have been signed.
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- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has given
a goal of increasing actual reconstruction spending by $300 million to
$400 million a month.
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- Republican congressional aides said monthly spending
could come in total closer to $500 million to $600 million.
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- The White House defended the process.
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- "These are major, complex, long-term construction
projects and it takes a long time to spend every last dollar on work like
that so that we can be sure the taxpayers are getting what they're paying
for," said Chad Kolton, spokesman for the White House Office of Management
and Budget.
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- "You need contracts to actually do the work. What
the president said is within the next several months more than $9 billion
will be spent on contracts so that work can proceed. That's half of the
$18.4 billion and it is a significant milestone in Iraq's reconstruction,"
Kolton added.
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