The Pentagon on Monday said that it is set to ask Congress next week for billions of dollars in additional war funding for the 2009 fiscal year. The $70 billion request to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other military operations will be in supplement to the Pentagon's regular budget requests. “We'll send up the fiscal year ‘09 budget (next Monday). It will have a request for an emergency allowance to support activities related to the global war on terror into 2009 ... in the amount of 70 billion,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Congress has approved $691 billion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and related activities such as Iraq reconstruction, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said last week. The CBO estimated that $440 billion had been spent on the war in Iraq. In past years, members of Congress have pressed the White House to submit full war funding requests with the regular Pentagon budget so that both can be considered at the same time. For the 2008 fiscal year, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush requested a total of nearly $190 billion in war funding, but the Congress has not yet approved that amount. In December of 2007, the Congress approved a $70 billion “bridge fund” in partial war funding for the current 2008 fiscal year. The 2009 U.S. fiscal year begins on October 1, 2008.
