WASHINGTON - Congress on Thursday asked how it can help the over-budget and behind-schedule program to rid the United States of its chemical weapons go faster or cost less.

Army officials said they didn't have any specific requests, but a recent reorganization of the program's management is helping get it back on track.

"This is an exciting and successful time for the program," said Claude Bolton, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, technology and logistics.

But members of the House Armed Services Committee were skeptical, noting that the 1986 estimate for destroying 31,000 tons of the outdated but still lethal weapons was $1.7 billion. Today, the cost estimate is $25 billion.

"This is a lot of money," said Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., chairman of the subcommittee that held a hearing on the topic Thursday.

Also, the original goal to destroy 45 percent of the stockpile was April 2004, a deadline that was recently extended in an international agreement to Dec. 31, 2007. The Army also plans to ask to extend the deadline for 100 percent destruction, possibly to 2012. It's now 2007.

"If we don't bring this all together, I'll be up here next year or the year after, or my successor if I'm fired, explaining why we didn't make it," Bolton said.

Since incineration began at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific in 1990, about 26 percent of the stockpile has been destroyed. The figure does not include the sarin-filled rockets burned at the incinerator in Anniston over the last month.

Craig Conklin, a Department of Homeland Security official, testified that another $145 million would have to be spent on emergency preparations in the Anniston community between now and when the incinerator closes. But Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Anniston, questioned the money spent so far, which Conklin said was $177 million.

"I've just been real frustrated by the fact that in recent years we haven't seen that program ready," Rogers said.