After the tradition-al haggling between the finance ministry and the other governmental departments the German cabinet approved the 2005 budget proposal on June 23. Total expenditure will grow slightly to ?258.3 billion, of which ?23.9 billion are reserved for defence. Since this amount is almost ?350 million below the initial request by defence minister Peter Struck, members of his Social Democrat party in the influential budget commitee promised to try and find additional funding during parliamentary deliberations scheduled to be finalised by the end of the year.
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