Pentagon Slush Fund

Food for thought....

Some people think that federal government spending should be cut further. Other people strongly disagree with that.

But here's one thing that most Americans can agree on about the budget: if there are going to be cuts to federal government spending, the Pentagon budget should not be spared. Even Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel - before he became Defense Secretary - called the Pentagon budget "bloated."

Republicans in Congress have been using a trick to protect Pentagon spending while they cut domestic spending. The trick is to move things from the base Pentagon budget into the "war budget" - the "Overseas and Contingency Operations" account, or OCO. OCO was exempted from budget caps when the Budget Control Act was passed, so Congress can put as much money as it wants in the OCO account without technically "busting the caps." So when they say they've cut the Pentagon budget, it's very misleading, because they moved most of the spending that they cut somewhere else: the OCO "slush fund." (1)

Recently, when Senator Bernie Sanders proposed to use money from the OCO account for veterans' benefits, Republicans blocked his bill in the Senate, even though the majority of Senators supported Sanders' bill. You can't use that money for veterans, Republicans said: that's not a real offset, because OCO is not capped. The Republicans' stance was the height of hypocrisy, because these Republicans have no problem using OCO to pay for weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn't want and doesn't need, in order to benefit their Pentagon contractor buddies who are giving them huge campaign contributions. That's why they blocked Sanders' bill: they want to keep the money in the Pentagon slush fund for their Pentagon contractor buddies who give them campaign contributions, not share the money with veterans and their families.

The status quo is intolerable. It's unacceptable to have a one-way street where OCO can be used for unnecessary weapons systems but not for taking care of our veterans. If OCO can't be used for veterans' benefits, then OCO must be shut down.

That's why Just Foreign Policy is promoting a petition that the Win Without War coalition (of which we're a member) has put up at MoveOn to shut down the OCO account, the Pentagon's slush fund. You can read, sign, and share the petition here:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/kill-oco

Let me be clear: we strongly support the Sanders bill to expand veterans benefits by taking money from the OCO account. If some of the money in the Pentagon slush fund could be diverted from funding unnecessary weapons systems to helping veterans and their families, we think that would be a great advance.

But if Republicans are going to block using OCO for veterans' benefits while using OCO for unnecessary weapons systems, we need to call them out on their hypocrisy. If veterans and their families can't benefit from the OCO money, then the money should be returned to the taxpayers.

Call out the Republicans for their hypocrisy by signing and sharing Win Without War's petition at MoveOn:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/kill-ocoThank you for all you do to help fix Washington's upside-down budget priorites,

Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy

References:
1. "The Pentagon's Phony Budget War,"Mattea Kramer, Research director, National Priorities Project, Huffington Post, 3/06/2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mattea-kramer/pentagon-budget-cuts_b_4911184.html