Delaying Talk About the Cost of War

As war with Iraq has gone from possibility to likelihood to reality over the past several months, the Bush administration has persistently declined to tell Congress and taxpayers what the conflict would cost — and for good reason, said Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the White House budget director.

We really did want to wait to get a little better sense of what scenario we were facing," Mr. Daniels said late on Friday, two days after Mr. Bush began the war with an effort — its success still unclear — to bring it to a speedy end by killing Saddam Hussein. "Had there been a very quick resolution, clearly we would have sent a scaled-down request."

But many Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as some independent analysts and a few Republicans, said Mr. Bush had been stalling for another reason.

They said that setting out the big price tag for the war and its immediate aftermath — at least $60 billion and perhaps as much as $100 billion, depending on what the administration includes — would complicate if not doom the White House's efforts to push through Congress a budget that makes room for Mr. Bush's latest round of tax cuts.
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