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Obama Seeks $75.5 Billion in Emergency War Funding for Rest of Fiscal Year

President Obama will seek $130 billion in war funding for fiscal 2010 in addition to $75.5 billion more this fiscal year.

FoxNews. Thursday, February 26, 2009. President Obama is seeking an additional $75.5 billion in war funding for rest of the fiscal year, and another $130 billion for fiscal 2010, as he seeks to draw down troop levels in Iraq and build up the military presence in Afghanistan.

The president unveiled a $3.6 trillion overall spending plan for next year on Thursday, detailing plans to commit billions of dollars to health care expansion and provide another costly backstop for the ailing financial industry.

The fiscal 2010 request for war spending would be in addition to the proposed $534 billion defense budget for that year.

The supplemental request for fiscal 2009 brings the total war supplemental for the year to $141.5 billion, over that year's baseline budget of $513 billion. The federal budget year lasts from Oct. 1-Sept. 30.

Obama has said he will no longer hide the full costs of the war, as he accused his predecessor of doing, and he did include a special category for war spending in material released to support his budget request for next year.

In years past, the Bush administration separated its spending for things like weapons and military pay from the cost of the wars. It was something of an accounting trick that some Democrats grumbled made it hard to compute the true costs of the unpopular war in Iraq.

Obama's budget summary doesn't list the projected costs for each war individually, and a defense official said the $130 billion war request also includes some costs for other overseas spending such as military help in Pakistan.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell revealed Wednesday that the administration would seek the additional funding, and that a war supplemental for fiscal 2010 is likely. He said the Pentagon will try to include all "predictable" war costs in the base budget and wants to eventually move away from supplemental budgets, but in fiscal 2010 there will be costs "above and beyond" early estimates.

President Bush requested $3.1 trillion for the U.S. government in fiscal year 2009. The House passed $410 billion in spending on Wednesday to wrap up the unfunded portions of the 2009 budget. It heads to the Senate next week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.