Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush’s record request for defense funding for 2008 may set up a fight with the Democratic Congress, keen to examine the budget for questionable spending.

Bush will request a $716 billion for defense spending and the global war on terror in his fiscal 2008 budget next week, according to a Pentagon document. The military funding request is greater than the annual gross domestic product of all but 14 countries.

The request to Congress includes $93.4 billion in additional money for fiscal 2007 to cover costs of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The remaining $622.6 billion would cover the year ending Sept. 30, 2008, and includes $141.7 billion for the wars.

Congress has already promised increased scrutiny of the additional funding request for 2007, wary that it will include items that should be funded in the annual budget, such as $389 million requested to buy two Lockheed Martin Corp. Joint Strike Fighters that won’t be operational until 2012 to replace F-16 fighters lost in Iraq.

There’s been “less justification” for the funding than there should be, House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina said in an Jan. 30 interview. Spratt said he and other lawmakers are concerned that the requests contained items not of an “emergency” nature.

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