The US House of Representatives has voted to approve a 'surge' of US troops in Afghanistan.
A day after General David Petraeus won Senate confirmation as commander of the NATO and US campaign by a 99-0 margin, the House approved a bill to put another $37bn into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read Deputy Foreign Editor Anthony Murnane's analysis of the situation in Afghanistan
Lawmakers approved the monies, including funds necessary to Mr Obama's plan to deploy another 30,000 troops to turn the faltering campaign around.
Democrats backing the war, allied with the US President's Republican foes, turned aside three amendments that posed stiff challenges to Mr Obama's strategy.
The House struck down one measure to cut all military spending from the bill by a 376-25 margin, and killing another to restrict the money to pay for a withdrawal of US forces by a 321-100 margin.
In a 260-162 vote, they also defeated a Democratic amendment aimed at requiring Mr Obama, who has set a July 2011 deadline for starting a US withdrawal, to set a complete timetable for that process.
Democrats accounted for the lion's share of the yes votes in each case.
But the fate of the bill was still clouded after Democrats attached more than $15bn in jobs and education programmes in a 239-182 that defied a presidential veto threat over cuts designed to pay for the measure.
The House changes meant the Senate, which approved the administration's request for the vastly unpopular Afghan war in May, would have to take up the measure the week of 12 July after the week-long 4 July recess.
The amendments reflected growing US public pessimism about the war, by some measures now the longest in US history, ahead of key November mid-term elections.
The spending bill also included nearly $3bn in aid for Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake there, $701m of increased US-Mexico border security and $304m for the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
