WASHINGTON: According to Defense officials, U.S. President Barack Obama will ask Congress for more than $200 billion to fund U.S. war efforts for the next year and a half.
According to the sources, the request will be for $75.5 billion for the rest of the 2009 fiscal year to cover the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan this year and additional $130 billion for 2010.
- $634bn on healthcare reform
- $200bn fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan
- $250bn in case banks need more money
“Each and every one of us has to compromise on certain things we care about, but which we simply cannot afford right now,” he said.
President Obama has promised to halve the budget deficit by the end of his term in 2013 and said one of the ways he would do so would be by cutting back on waste in government.
“We’re going to go through our books page by page, line by line to eliminate waste and inefficiency,” he said.
“This is a process that will take time, but in the last 30 days alone, we have already identified $2tn in deficit reductions that will help us cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term.”