introduced Monday evening<\/a>\u00a0would ramp up war spending for the first time in four years, and it includes billions for new weapon systems.<\/p>\nA trillion-dollar, government-wide omnibus spending measure crafted by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees includes $5 billion more for America\u2019s overseas conflicts than requested by the White House.<\/p>\n
Included in the $85 billion war-funding section, also called the overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget, is more than $6 billion in procurement funds spread across the Defense Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt appears Congress used the OCO loophole to increase the base defense budget without breaching the budget caps they just agreed to,\u201d said Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cuts from [operations and maintenance accounts] and procurement in the base budget were largely offset by corresponding increases in the OCO budget, which doesn\u2019t count against the budget caps,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is nothing new \u2014 Congress and DoD have been using this tactic to soften the impact of budget constraints for several years now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed war-funding hike would, if approved by both chambers this week and signed by President Barack Obama, swell the OCO account over the previous year\u2019s level for the first time since 2010. That year, the war account received around $160 billion, up from just over $140 billion in 2009, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The war account has been steadily shrinking since then.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers were able to use the OCO account, which is immune from sequestration cuts, to provide the Pentagon some relief from another across-the-board cut (about $20 billion) from its coming 2014 allocation.<\/p>\n
The biggest recipient of OCO procurement funds would be the Air Force, which would get $2.5 billion for its \u201cother procurement\u201d account. The National Guard and Reserve also would score big, receiving $1 billion \u201cfor procurement of aircraft, missiles, tracked combat vehicles, ammunition, other weapons and other procurement,\u201d according to the omnibus bill.<\/p>\n
Mirroring the base Pentagon budget section of the omnibus, the OCO section features $669 million for Army aircraft purchases. The Army also would receive $653 million to buy other equipment, and a $128.6 million allotment for missiles.<\/p>\n
Within those accounts, $386 million is slated for Boeing CH-47 helicopters; $142 million for Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters; $54 million for Lockheed Martin Hellfire missiles; and $117 million for upgrades to Bell OH-58 helicopters.<\/p>\n
One analyst and industry consultant said the Army and industrial base will benefit from the aircraft funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Army\u2019s revised base budget for 2014 cuts procurement by 10 percent from the original request, so the additional funding under OCO for rotorcraft purchases is important to sustaining a viable industrial base,\u201d said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. \u201cBoeing Vertical [the new name of its rotorcraft unit] and Bell Helicopter Textron look to be major beneficiaries of OCO procurement funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several groups are not as upbeat about the larger war-spending account, however.<\/p>\n
A coalition of nearly 30 watchdog and anti-war groups, in a statement issued Tuesday, said, \u201cCongress and the Pentagon are using the OCO as a \u2018slush fund\u2019 to pad the department\u2019s budget and avoid spending reductions.\u201d The groups say Congress \u201cshould not be artificially increasing the Pentagon\u2019s budget with accounting tricks, but should instead be targeting wasteful and unnecessary spending.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMembers of both parties and both chambers have once again failed the American taxpayer by increasing the Overseas Contingency Operations account,\u201d David Williams, president of one of the groups, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said in the statement. \u201cThere is no excuse for a $5 billion increase to OCO especially in a time of belt tightening throughout the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill also proposes $211 million for the Navy\u2019s aircraft procurement account, and $125 million for total Marine Corps procurement.<\/p>\n
The war-funding bill calls for $57 million for AV-8B Harrier jet work; $49 million for electronic countermeasures; $35.5 million for Boeing-built F\/A-18 fighters; $20.7 million for electronic warfare items for Marine air-ground task force aircraft; and $13 million for Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout drone helicopters.<\/p>\n
The Air Force, notably, would get fewer OCO dollars for aircraft than the Army: $188.8 million. The air service also would receive $24.2 million for missiles.<\/p>\n
Within the former, the bill calls for $73 million for one CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. In the latter, $24.2 million would buy new Hellfire missiles.<\/p>\n
The Hellfire missile and Predator drone have become a symbol of the Obama administration\u2019s aggressive targeted killing program of al-Qaida leaders and operatives from Pakistan to Yemen and elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OCO Section Features $6B To Buy New Weapons by John T. Bennett, Defense News click here for original article WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014 A massive US government spending bill\u00a0introduced Monday evening\u00a0would ramp up war spending for the first time in four years, and it includes billions for new weapon systems. A trillion-dollar, government-wide omnibus spending measure crafted by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/url-1.jpg?fit=133%2C165&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2721,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions\/2721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}