ABC:

Bush details $70 billion war funding request for 2009
Bush sends Congress details of $70 billion war request for 2009
By ANDREW TAYLOR
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Bush sent lawmakers a $70 billion request Friday to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, which would give the next president breathing room to make his or her own war policy.

Friday's request fills in the details of the $70 billion placeholder that the White House asked for when it sent its budget to Congress in February. The money is for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

$70 billion? What happened to the $108 billion figure from the other day?

Confused? Here's the scoop:

The $108 billion is the figure Bush demands for supplemental spending. That is, spending on top of what was budgeted for fiscal year 2008 (FY08).

The $70 billion is the figure Bush demands be put in the fiscal year 2009 budget. FY09, as the article mentions, begins on October 1, 2008 -- 112 days before Bush's term ends.

And as we discussed the other day, it looks like Congressional Democrats would like to add extra money -- probably that $70 billion or so -- to the supplemental. Why?

Democratic leaders say they're likely to add the $70 billion for next year to that measure, which would allow them to avoid a politically painful vote on war funding in the heat of campaigning for the November elections.

Dems don't want to be facing, well, you, just as they're voting on another $70 billion (on top of the $108 Bush is going to force out of them) for the war they're campaigning on ending. And they don't want the next president, assuming it's a Democrat, to have to do the same in his or her first months in office.

And so George W. Bush will put on his oversized foam rubber "fiscal conservative" cowboy hat for a while, and pretend it makes sense to draw the line on the supplemental at $108 billion and not a penny more (or he'll veto it, he says), even though he's about to ask for another $70 billion a few weeks later.

Take a good look at that situation, though.

What's more absurd, Democrats who want to end the war voting to front him (and the next president) an extra $70 billion more than he wants? Or Bush's ridiculous notion that it's somehow fiscally conservative to "budget" $70 billion for the war in FY09, when he's right now demanding nearly 55% more than that in supplemental FY08 spending.

What a friggin' crock.