In a letter released by the White House to the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, President Barack Obama has asked Congress to approve an additional $83.4 billion to help fund the U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The sum of this request can be broken down to $75.8 billion for the Pentagon and more than $7 billion for foreign aid; with $1.8 billion to be spent on Pakistan, $3.6 billion to be spent on the Afghan National Army, and $350 million to be spent on improving security along the U.S.-Mexico border and combating drug gangs.

The funding is intended to help pay for the reduction of U.S. forces present in Iraq to 140,000, and to increase the troop number in Afghanistan to 45,000 in accordance with Mr. Obama’s new Afghan strategy.

In his letter Obama claimed, “the Taliban is resurgent and Al-Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border,” with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs adding that this extra funding “will be the last supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan”.

This supplement would bring the total amount of military spending approved for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2009 to about $150 billion, in comparison to totals of $188 billion in 2008 and $171 billion in 2007.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 the United States Congress has passed 17 separate emergency funding bills totaling approximately $822 billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and should this extra funding be approved the cost of these two wars will have reached almost $1 trillion dollars.

Obama’s motion is likely to be passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress with House Republican leader John Boehner suggesting Republicans are likely to support this additional funding as well.

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