Obama to Seek $708 Billion for Wars in 2011

Request Is On Top of $33 Billion 'Emergency' Request

by Jason Ditz, January 13, 2010

In a request that will likely put the call for $33 billion in “emergency” war funds for 2010 in a new light, President Obama is now planning to request at least a $708 billion military budget for fiscal year 2011. This record amount for America’s already enormous military even surpasses the Bush Administration’s largest annual expenditures for wars.

The revelation came as part of the Obama Administration’s “Quadrennial Defense Review,” (QDR) which laid out the size of its planned military budgets and military goals through 2015.

The QDR will reportedly plan for dramatic cuts in the cost of war past fiscal year 2011, under the assumption that the Iraq War and Afghan War won’t cost nearly so much by that point.

Yet it should be noted that the Obama Administration previously laid out a plan which anticipated those savings starting in 2011, and now that it is time to actually seek the 2011 war funds it has simply been pushed back another year.

The administration maintains that the Iraq pullout is “on pace” despite having removed only a handful of troops in 2009, while officials are already suggesting that the pledge to start an Afghan pullout in 2011 is probably not sincere.

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