How much more money will the Pentagon need?

Now that President Obama has officially signed the defense bill, giving the U.S. military $626 billion for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, the question becomes: When will the Pentagon need more money?

It depends on whom you ask. If you’re House Defense Appropriations Chairman John Murtha, D-PA, the military will need more war money next spring to pay for Obama’s surge of troops to Afghanistan. That troop increase is expected to cost between $25 and $30 billion, on top of the $128 billion given in today’s bill for "ongoing contingency operations," as the wars are now called.

"Tell me how you’re gonna pay for this war without a supplemental. You can’t do it," Murtha said. He predicted the supplemental would total about $40 billion. (That’s about $10 to $15 billion more than the cost of the surge, but lawmakers never find it difficult to find additional things to spend on.)

Murtha said the money that Obama signed into law Monday wouldn’t cover the war costs even without the surge, saying, "There would be a supplemental whether you had to pay for the additional troops or not."

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month the Pentagon would need more money sometime next year, and that was also before the new Afghanistan strategy was announced.

But if you ask folks in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, they say that additional war money might not be needed at all beyond what was just given.

"We will look to see how much of these costs can be addressed through funds already budgeted," said OMB spokesman Tom Gavin told The Cable. "If needed, the administration will work with Congress on any necessary additional funding." (emphasis added)

So what’s the real story here? Well, according to the Congressional Research Service, the burn rate (the cost of obligations and pay) for Iraq and Afghanistan was at about $11 billion per month as of the end of September, meaning that the funding signed into law today could last almost the whole fiscal year, but only if you don’t count the surge.

Gavin said that the White House was looking to refine the cost of the Afghanistan surge now. Of course, the administration could request the war funding in its fiscal 2011 budget request in February, but seeing how long it took to get the fiscal 2010 money, that might not be a great idea.

The most likely scenario is that the White House will have to submit a separate request for money to pay for the surge, lawmakers will add a whole host of items they couldn’t fit into the regular budget, and Obama will take some flak for once again compromising on his pledge to transparently budget and pay for the wars.

Congress has already approved $1.07 trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, CRS reported.