John Sexton:
Earlier this week, Politico published a five-page memo written by two high-ranking Department of Defense officials that advised Ash Carter to start coordinating attacks on Republicans with Democrats and the White House. As Austin Wright and Jeremy Herb wrote, the memo comes across as an “intelligence estimate” on various leaders of Congress, advising Carter on how to apply pressure on “discomfort” points. Carter took their advice, at least in part, after publicizing a lengthy “heartburn letter” over what the Pentagon calls a budget gimmick — using a war fund for “Overseas Contingency Operations” (itself a gimmicky, Obama-administration-preferred nomenclature for military counterterrorism operations) to fund more basic military needs.
John wrote about the Republican reaction to this on Tuesday, but the budget mechanism itself deserves some attention, too. It’s true that Republicans sought to use the OCO account to fund basic operations for several months, but the use of the OCO “gimmick” was based on another gimmick proposed by the Obama administration — sequestration. The DoD budget has caps placed on it from the budget-control negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, but the agreement exempts the OCO account from spending limits.
As Michael Cochrane explains in World, the fight exists in the first place because the White House refuses to properly fund the military unless Republicans agree to big increases in domestic spending, too. And the supposed danger to the military from the temporary use of OCO funds is nonsense as well:
The focus of the controversy is the Republican-led House proposal to get around the defense budget caps by using $18 billion from the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account to fund needed military readiness and modernization improvements. Such a move would fund the OCO account only through the end of April instead of the end of September 2017.
The Pentagon memo calls this move a “gimmick,” and in an Office of Management and Budget memo earlier this year, the Obama administration strongly criticized the approach, saying it would cut off “critical funding for wartime operations.”
But some defense budget experts, while acknowledging the House proposal is a gimmick of sorts, think the risk to troops in combat is low.
Cochrane quotes Heritage Foundation analyst Justin Johnson, who also notes the hypocrisy of fighting against an $18 billion appropriation through OCO while demanding another $100 billion from Congress:
Their afraid of trump in the District of Crinimals they fear he will shake them out of their trees and will oppose the NWO and Obama making himself Emporer