Separate Afghan war funding bill likely: lawmaker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress likely will need to pass a separate spending bill next year to finance President Barack Obama's troop increase in Afghanistan, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said on Tuesday.

Asked if there will be an emergency spending bill, known as a "supplemental," for Obama's planned increase of 30,000 troops over the next six months, Levin told reporters, "I think there will have to be."

But the White House said it would look to see how much of the costs can be addressed through funds already budgeted.

"If needed, the administration will work with Congress on any necessary additional funding," an official from the White House's Office of Management and Budget said.

Financing the Afghan war could become contentious. Lawmakers are worried about a struggling economy with high unemployment and are debating a costly healthcare overhaul.

An administration official said Obama's Afghan strategy would incur military costs of $25 billion to $30 billion in fiscal year 2010, and that there may be additional diplomatic and civilian costs.

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who opposes expanding the Afghan war, said he would try to block additional funding. "This is a mistake," the liberal Democrat said of Obama's reported plan, which the president was to announce at a speech on Tuesday evening.

Congress has approved separate emergency funding bills each year since fighting started in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003. Democrats had criticized former President George W. Bush for failing to include war funding in the regular budget.

Democrats, who won a majority in Congress in 2006, had hoped to stop the practice of funding the war through supplementals.

SPENDING DOUBLED

Spending on the war in Afghanistan has more than doubled over the last year, reaching $6.7 billion in June alone.

Republican Representative Walter Jones, at the news conference with Feingold, said many people asked him why Congress was willing to spend more money on the conflict when they "can't fix the streets in our district."

In recent years opponents repeatedly failed to block funding for the Iraq war. Most U.S. lawmakers are reluctant to cut off funding for troops in the field.

Supplemental financing would come on top of $130 billion that Congress has authorized for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the fiscal year that started on October 1.

Levin and other senators poured cold water on the idea of raising money to pay for the war through a special surtax, as proposed by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a skeptic of widening the war.

"I don't think any tax increase in the middle of a recession, except a tax on the upper income bracket ... can happen," Levin said.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said a good place to look for money would be unspent stimulus funds that Congress approved this year to boost the economy.

(Additional reporting by Alister Bull, Kim Dixon and Donna Smith)