Andy:

Yeah. It'd be tough to get buy-in from someone who doesn't seem to care about you as a person. I'll give that some thought. I haven't encountered that situation.

Your situation is okay. You have the precedent in place. Lots of people don't even have that.

Protect the precedent. Put it out in the open that you support the need to make short-term adjustments due to budget pressures - but you want to make sure that over the long-term, the environment doesn't digress. Even in lean times, it's tough to argue that there isn't room in a budget for a book - in a medium-size company.

You've been served, though. You were told to exhaust the free training available - and really you need to do that before going back to ask for expenses, I'd say.