Obama Requests $58.6 Billion in 2015 War Funding

What’s the Latest?

President Barack Obama has made his annual request to Congress for the coming fiscal year’s war budget, reports David Alexander of Reuters. The president has requested $58.6 billion in war funds, a 25% cut from this current year’s budget. The amount of requested funds is the lowest in a decade.

While most of that money will go toward funding the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the proposed budget also includes over $2 billion in funding to support American interests in Syria and its neighbors, including Iraq.

What’s the Big Idea?

It’s important to note that the $58.6 billion requested by the president isn’t the entire Defense budget (it’s way more than that), but rather monies allocated for the Pentagon’s continued war effort. The smaller fighting budget makes sense considering the president’s plan to reduce American boots on the ground in Afghanistan to roughly 10,000 by 2015. Less presence in warzones equals less money spent to air condition tents, for instance. But just because more soldiers are coming home doesn’t mean that the continued war in Afghanistan is about to wind down like its brother in Iraq did. It just means that drones can be expected to do more heavy lifting as humans depart.

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