War Funding Has Lost Its Meaning
By Fred Ferreira
September 08, 2016
In an August 2016 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Defense (DOD) does not properly separate its accounts for spending in Operations and Management (O&M). O&M receives funding from both the regular DOD base budget and the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund, but current accounting guidelines do not require these be separated when reporting to Congress. This muddling has a profound impact on how Congress and the public regard the defense budget, even worse are the dire impacts on our national debt.
OCO was created as a funding mechanism providing ready resources for rapidly emerging threats, such as the “Global War on Terrorism.” Under President Obama, it became “Overseas Contingency Operations,” with the same provisions to provide for war funding, but has steadily come to fund other DoD programs instead.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/09/08/war_funding_has_lost_its_meaning_110027.html
