Obama to Continue Wartime Supplementals for Next Year

During the campaign President Obama declared that he wanted to end the practice of using supplemental appropriations to fund continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Bloomberg reports that the Pentagon is preparing to submit a supplemental request to Congress for 2009. This would be the second such supplemental authorized. IT is expected that this would be the last for this year. This supplemental request is actually larger then originally planned as it includes extra funding to support Obama's recent decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The reason the Pentagon uses supplemental funds is that the annual budget requires that all funding be identified with a specific use or program. This means that when there is an increase in requirements either Congress must allow DoD to move money around which is a rather painstaking process or give them more against that line. Combat operations are hard to predict which does not make the easiest of budget planning.