General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBarack 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 wont 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.
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.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/barack-obama-afghanistan-war-108364.html?hp=l5
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Or, turn into deficit turtles because the money's for blowing up women, kids and houses. We can't feed or house our own citizens, but there's always lots of money for military adventurism, even if it isn't paid for. Will this time turn out any different? Will Republican animosity toward all things Obama trump Republican affinity for all things military?
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Strange world we live in.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)so that children in other countries grow up without parents or don't grow up at all.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Nothing for Detroit.
Billions for Bombs.
Yaay Team.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)Those words capture the essence of the issue.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Its union jobs built the Middle Class.
Its schools produced generations of Scholars and Workers.
And now, thanks to NAFTA and a half century of automation, computerization and robotics; Detroit's workforce is forced to compete with $1 a day labor.
Yaay Team.
Initech
(100,129 posts)Seriously, fuck the military industrial complex.
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)What is the end game here? A safer planet? We can't even tell who the "good guys" are. And even if we can it's not usually long before they become the "bad guys".
This is insanity. The MIC is out of control, the media is complacent(at best) and we keep doing the same thing over and over.,,.
It doesn't take a strong nation to go to war. It takes a strong nation not to.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Priorities, man. Priorities.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Hope and Change, my ass.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Spend the money ...our money ...on us for some real change.
Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)but this is bullshit, and I'm sick of it.