The President’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2019 is a little schizophrenic when it comes to detailing Pentagon spending. On the one hand the topline numbers in both “An American Budget”, released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and in the statistical tables show Pentagon spending as totaling $686 billion.
This is broken down to show $597 billion for the so-called “base budget” and a whopping $89 billion for the war budget, also known as Overseas Contingency Operations or OCO spending.
However, OMB also released a document called “Addendum to the President’s FY19 Budget to Account for the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.” In that letter to the Congress from OMB Director Mulvaney, he states that, “this addendum shifts $20 billion of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding to the base budget. This change results in … a revised OCO level of $69 billion.”
The addendum brings OCO spending in line with the $69 billion that was agreed to in BBA18.
The addendum goes on to add:
“In FY2020 and the outyears, the Administration proposes returning to OCO’s original purpose by shifting certain costs funded in OCO to the base budget where they belong.”
Hallelujah! Talk about music to our ears at TCS. Of course it’s easy to kick that can down the road and say, “Next year we’ll start being more fiscally responsible.”
We’ll be watching and waiting for the shifting of those costs back to the base budget. Next year.
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