- Joined
- Mar 11, 2006
- Messages
- 96,105
- Reaction score
- 33,447
- Location
- SE Virginia
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
Link
Doesn't seem like anything much has changed.By Tony Capaccio
Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will seek $75.5 billion more for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of this fiscal year, according to three people familiar with the request.
It will be submitted along with the fiscal 2010 budget Obama sends to Congress tomorrow. That proposal will request $130 billion for the wars in fiscal 2010 in addition to a total Defense Department budget of about $534 billion, the people said.
The amounts for the wars are less than Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked for and in keeping with expectations that the president plans a major reduction of the 142,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.
The extra funding for fiscal 2009, which ends Sept. 30, includes money for adding 17,000 troops to the U.S. force of 38,000 in Afghanistan.
Gates in December said he would need $69.7 billion more this year, not counting the cost of adding troops in Afghanistan. On Feb. 3, he told the White House he would need as much as $83 billion. Obama announced the troop increase two weeks later.
The $130 billion requested for the conflicts in fiscal 2010 is at the low range of the Pentagon’s request for $130 billion to $140 billion.
Congress already has approved $65.9 billion in emergency wartime spending for fiscal 2009.