Obama sent lawmakers a series of budget amendments requesting $58.6 billion. Obama seeks $65 billion in war funds

President Barack Obama asked Congress on Thursday for more than $65 billion to support the war in Afghanistan and global security programs, but key members of Congress say they won’t rubber-stamp the request and are frustrated at having been kept out of its preparations.

The president sent lawmakers a series of budget amendments requesting $58.6 billion for the Pentagon — well short of a nearly $80 billion “placeholder” submitted with its regular budget earlier this year — and $7.3 billion for the State Department.


That total includes new requests to support European security over the short term and a new counter-terrorism fund that Obama says is necessary to help combat terrorists across the Middle East and Africa.

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Part of the new fund would go toward directly supporting rebel groups fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, handing Congress the political hot potato of determining whether to support arming and training the rebels.

Although the OCO request was smaller than the “placeholder,” officials renewed their caution to Congress that the war account spending will not decline at the same rate as the American troop presence in Afghanistan, which is set to fall from about 33,000 today to about 9,800 by the first of next year.

“Although the FY 2015 OCO request reflects a transition as the United States concludes combat operations in Afghanistan partway into the fiscal year, most costs will not decline precipitously,” wrote Brian Deese, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“For example,” he said, “DoD will still incur significant costs to transport personnel, supplies and equipment back to their home stations. Funding to sustain the [Afghan National Security Forces] will continue to be needed to ensure that Afghan forces can provide sufficient security. There will be continued costs to repair and replace equipment and munitions as DoD resets the force over the next few years.”

The Army and Marine Corps especially have said they are counting on a few more years’ worth of OCO to help recapitalize their war-battered equipment, although defense officials acknowledge they expect nearly everything that has been funded by the wartime accounts must move back into the base defense budget.

Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant, said that the a $50 billion-to-$60 billion figure had been thrown around in defense industry circles for months.

“However, for those who thought OCO could serve as a slush fund for other projects, the $20 billion difference between the actual request and the budget placeholder will be a disappointment,” Thompson said. “This is a sizable drop from last year’s figure, and signals that the biggest buffer against sequestration is disappearing.”

Defense advocates on Capitol Hill told POLITICO on Thursday they weren’t sure yet what to make of Obama’s long-awaited OCO request. The White House budget office has kept nearly everyone, including the Pentagon, at arm’s length in preparing it, congressional sources complained.

“That is certainly the impression committee staff have been left with, based on our interaction with Defense officials,” said one Republican House Armed Services Committee aide.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), didn’t even wait for the OCO request to fault what he called the White House’s secrecy. A member of Congress in his position shouldn’t have to depend on press reports to learn what the administration is working on, he said.

“Once again I have learned important details of a major decision by the Department of Defense by reading it in the press instead of hearing it from Secretary [Chuck] Hagel,” McKeon said in a statement. “The administration delayed this proposal for over four months and now appears to be in a rush to deliver it to the Hill with little detail on how the department would spend the money.”

Senators had not received any notice from the administration about the OCO request Thursday morning, even after press reports late Wednesday included the $58.6 billion figure. A Senate committee aide said the administration briefed the panel roughly two hours before the war funding request was made public Thursday.

Several lawmakers said they didn’t know whether the funding would be sufficient until they had more details, and Republican hawks made clear they want to give input on what goes into the war funding budget.

“We need to revisit this whole account in light of what’s going on in Iraq, in light of what could happen in Afghanistan,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO. “Defending Jordan, maybe helping Lebanon — these are things, overseas contingencies, that have occurred in the last six months to a year, and I don’t know if they’ve incorporated those concepts.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that funding for potential military action in Iraq should also be included.

“It’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of policy,” McCain said. “Obviously, I’m going to want to know what it’s used for. I also want to know what the strategy is — so far there’s been no strategy.”

Graham and McCain did agree, however, on supporting Syria’s rebels, though McCain supports the strategy of creating an American or internationally protected “safe zone”

Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee needs to play a role in dispensing the funds that Obama is proposing.

“The number isn’t important — it’s what he wants to use it for,” Inhofe told reporters. “And what I think we should do is authorize where it should go. And how it should be disposed of and how it should be used.”

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in a statement he supported the president’s request.

“In light of recent events in Iraq and Syria, this is appropriate spending,” Levin said. “The request includes $500 million to train and equip vetted elements of the Syrian opposition, which closely matches language approved by a strong bipartisan majority on the Armed Services Committee during our consideration of the defense authorization bill.”

Levin’s panel has approved its annual defense authorization bill without any provision for war funding, but the bill still has to go to the Senate floor, which could give the chamber an opportunity to approve the OCO request.

A House aide said the House Armed Services Committee will still have to determine how it will approve the president’s war budget, but said that the same oversight will be given to that funding as the original budget request.