A powerful House committee is directing the Defense Department to consolidate requests for fiscal year 2009 war spending into its base budget proposal, a first step toward remedying what lawmakers assert is "fiscal flabbiness" that has "infected" the Pentagon's budgeting process on the Bush administration's watch. In its version of the Pentagon's fiscal year 2008 base spending package, the House Appropriations Committee lays out a stinging critique of Defense Department budgeting practices adopted since 2003 and directs a number of...
