DoD supplemental war budget coming in November

Congress will have a fresh request for funds from the Defense Department in November to pay for overseas operations.

The request will come in the form of a supplemental request to the 2017 overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget DoD submitted earlier this year. Congress has yet to pass either a base or an OCO budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

“This reflects the seizing of opportunities by the President, opportunities that are good for us.  So it’s a very natural thing to do and a good thing to do,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota yesterday. “There is a [monetary] range.  And we’re going to continue to refine that … we [will] continue to refine those estimates while [Congress is] out of session and have a completed estimate when they come back in November hopefully to complete the budget in its entirety.”

The supplemental will be used to fight the way against the Islamic State and to pay for additional troops the U.S. is leaving in Afghanistan in 2017.

The second supplemental is the newest way for Congress and DoD to continue to pay for wars without triggering sequestration or going over the caps of the 2015 budget deal.

The 2017 DoD base budget and its supplemental wartime kitty, the OCO fund, have already been maxed out. The 2015 budget agreement set caps on each of those budgets, which Congress has already filled to the brim.

That means in order to legally add more money to DoD to pay for the extra troops in Afghanistan or for the fight in Iraq and Syria, Congress and DoD will have to circumvent the rules of the budget deal.

Carter said yesterday that DoD has been planning a supplement since the spring.

But the new kitty came into prominence after President Barack Obama announced in July that almost 3,000 more troops would be staying in Afghanistan than expected. After Obama’s declaration, House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) urged DoD to come up with a spending plan.

“This budget does not have room for the troops [the President] is committing.  For all of the bluster about funding troops in harm’s way, it is the President who proposes to extend the vital mission without any resources behind it.  The White House must submit a supplemental funding request to accommodate troop levels in Afghanistan immediately,” Thornberry said.

Clearly, DoD did not send in that request immediately, but Carter seems to think it will make it to the Hill before the winter.

A second supplemental may be a loophole in the budget rules, but it brings up concerns over how supplemental funds are being used.

OCO has been taking criticism from military officials and experts for years.

“OCO has become a ‘slush fund,’ with the sole purpose of providing the Pentagon support above and beyond the [sequestration] budget caps,” states a May study from the Stimson Center.

As the fund has become more ingrained in DoD culture, it has been used less as a means to pay for war expenses and more of a way to worm around the rules of sequestration.

OCO funding is not subjected to sequestration caps. So when Congress can’t fit important DoD programs into the over-packed suitcase that is the base budget, it just sneaks it into OCO.

OCO got so big and was allowing for so much extra defense funding while leaving domestic spending to pay by the rules of sequestration that the 2015 budget deal put a cap on OCO. But now, this new supplemental may bypass that cap too.

The House proposed in its 2017 defense authorization bill a maneuver that would require Congress to vote on two OCO type funds in one fiscal year. The tactic is a way for Congress to pay for more military end strength and a higher military pay raise.

The bill takes $18 billion from OCO to pay for the increases, leaving war funds to dry up in April 2017. At that point, Congress would have to create another supplemental to pay for the wars through the end of the year.

Critics worry the measure could leave troops without funding if Congress can’t come to an agreement and pass a bill authorizing the second fund by April.

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