Obama’s $130 Billion War Budget Based on ‘Best Estimates’
Now President Obama will have to face the same challenges President Bush did. This time instead of being from the other side of the isle lets see how loud the Democrats complain as well as how tough the “standards for progress” are.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s proposed defense budget includes $130 billion for the nation’s two wars, a figure that may not be enough.
And his Democratic allies in Congress are threatening to set conditions that must be met before that money is handed out.
Obama sent to Congress on Thursday details of his proposed $664 billion Pentagon spending plan for the budget year starting in October. It includes $534 billion for base defense programs and $130 billion for overseas operations, including the wars he’s ramping down in Iraq and ramping up in Afghanistan.
The budget aims to cover what the Defense Department needs “to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same time providing a hedge against other risks and contingencies,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a statement released in Washington as he traveled in Afghanistan.
The $130 billion for overseas missions included $65 billion for Afghanistan and $61 billion for Iraq — the first time spending for the seven-year-old Afghan campaign has surpassed the one in Iraq.
“This request is where you’re going to first see the swing of not only dollars or resources but … capability from the Iraqi theater into the Afghanistan theater,” Navy Vice Adm. Steve Stanley, director of force structure for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference.
A Pentagon summary of the budget request said the war spending proposal “is intended to fund all currently known requirements for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the entire fiscal year.”
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An Average Day in a Free Country
This is funny in a way, just one mans daily dealing with Government
I am fairly vocal amongst my friends (and a few strangers) regarding my bias towards limited government. The typical response I get is something along the lines of, “Are you crazy, America is the freest country in the world!” I think the secondhand dealers in information (public school teachers and the sensationalist media amongst others) have done a great job of indoctrinating the general population into believing that we are truly free. They really don’t notice the subtle effects of a new law here and a new regulation there. It’s kind of like the curse of income tax withholding where by stealing our hard-earned money a little bit at a time (each paycheck) we don’t notice that we are being robbed. I feel that our freedom is being stolen a little bit at a time. To help drive home the point, I’ll use an average day in my life as an example.
My alarm goes off each morning somewhere between 6 and 7 am. I am not a big fan of the buzzer so I typically set my alarm to “radio” mode. I haven’t paid up for satellite radio, so I still wake up to “Free FM.” Well, I am awake for a whole 10 seconds and here is my first interaction with Big Brother. The beast known as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has a complete stranglehold on what we hear over the radio waves. As is the case with the majority of government regulation, we supposedly need the FCC to “protect” the people. In this particular case, we are being protected from offensive material on the airwaves. Of course, “offensive” is defined by whoever happens to be calling the shots at the FCC at the time.
