$130B proposed for defense

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s proposed defense budget includes $130 billion for the nation’s two wars, a figure that may not be enough.

And his Democratic allies in Congress are threatening to set conditions that must be met before that money is handed out.

Obama sent to Congress on Thursday details of his proposed $664 billion Pentagon spending plan for the budget year starting in October. It includes $534 billion for base defense programs and $130 billion for overseas operations, including the wars he’s ramping down in Iraq and ramping up in Afghanistan.

The budget aims to cover what the Defense Department needs “to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same time providing a hedge against other risks and contingencies,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a statement released in Washington as he traveled in Afghanistan.

The $130 billion for overseas missions included $65 billion for Afghanistan and $61 billion for Iraq — the first time spending for the seven-year-old Afghan campaign has surpassed the one in Iraq.

A Pentagon summary of the budget request said the war spending proposal “is intended to fund all currently known requirements for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the entire fiscal year.”

But it hedged by also saying the plan is the “administration’s best estimate of needs at this time.”

Under pressure from Congress to develop ways to measure progress in Afghanistan, officials have said the administration is readying benchmarks to gauge security, governance and economic development there. The effort comes as lawmakers warn that Congress may try to condition budget approval for the Afghanistan war on whether improvements are being made on a number of fronts.