Obama to ask for $75bn for war spending

Obama to ask for $75bn for war spending
By Andrew Ward and Daniel Dombey in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 9 2009 23:40 | Last updated: April 9 2009 23:40
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a4cd0564-2556-11de-8a66-00144feabdc0.html


President Barack Obama was poised on Thursday to request $83.4bn in fresh funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and aid to help Pakistan combat extremists.

The proposed spending would push the total cost of the two wars to nearly $1,000bn since the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

The request threatens to alienate some of Mr Obama’s supporters because he ran for president on a platform of staunch opposition to the war in Iraq and voted against some similar requests by George W. Bush’s administration.

But the White House said it had no choice but to seek extra money as it winds down military operations in Iraq while sending more troops to tackle the growing insurgency in Afghanistan.

Congress has approved war funding for only half the current fiscal year, forcing Mr Obama to seek stop-gap measures until his own budget comes into effect, subject to congressional approval, in October.

The White House said it would mark the last such supplemental request before war funding is brought within the normal budget process for the 2010 fiscal year. Mr Obama frequently criticised the Bush administration for obscuring the cost of the wars by keeping them out of the federal budget.

In a sign of the administration’s intention to make more resources available for diplomacy, the funding request includes $7.1bn for foreign aid. But that figure is still dwarfed by the $75bn requested for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president announced plans last month to withdraw most US troops from Iraq by the end of August next year, although a residual force of up to 50,000 troops will stay until the end of 2011. There are currently about 140,000 US troops in the country.

In Afghanistan, Mr Obama has ordered the deployment of an additional 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 more to train Afghan forces, on top of the 38,000 already there.

Chief among the foreign aid projects are funding for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as resources for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and for Mexico.

If approved by Congress, the money would go most of the way to meeting the $900m commitment made by Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, at a pledging conference for the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh last month. But US administrations’ plans to provide money for the occupied territories often encounter difficulties in Congress, with many lawmakers expressing fears that money could end up in the hand of extremists.

The funding request is also understood to include $66m to help provide Blackhawk helicopters for the Mexican police in the country’s increasingly bloody fight against drug cartels. This comes after Congress cut a previous administration request for funding for Mexico from $450m to $300m.