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Appropriations panel boosts war spending by $5 billion
The Senate Appropriations Committee allocated nearly the same amount for the 2013 Pentagon budget that President Obama has requested, but there’s one caveat: the panel put nearly $5 billion more in the war budget.
The committee said Thursday its Defense Department spending will include $93.3 billion in overseas contingency operations (OCO), which funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an increase of $4.9 billion from the Pentagon’s $88.4 billion request.
With the shift, the committee’s overall $604 billion allocation for the base Pentagon budget and OCO is essentially in line with the Pentagon’s budget request.
The reason for the increase in war spending? The Obama budget was about $4 billion above the defense spending caps from the Budget Control Act, so the Appropriations Committee shifted the money into the OCO account, which is not included in the caps.
The Appropriations Committee passed the spending targets on Thursday.
The shift could lead defense budget critics to charge that budget gimmicks are being used to get around spending limits.
The war budget has long been a point of contention in budget battles, including this year — Obama said in the State of the Union that he wanted to use the savings for stimulus spending, a move that has been criticized by Republicans.
The 2013 war budget request dropped by $27 billion from the previous year, in large part due to the end of the Iraq war.
The committee aide said that each year the panel shifts some funds from the Pentagon’s base budget into the war budget, such as weapons replacement and repair, and some training, operations and personnel costs.
The president’s 2013 request also included some increases in the war budget from the year before, such as $3 billion more for troop costs — a move National Journal labeled “war-spending voodoo.”
As for what funds are getting moved from, the committee said no details on the Defense budget will be available until a markup.
