The Pentagon still has a ways to go to pay all of its bills
from a stagnant base budget. Proposals to better match means and ends-including
retiring the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jet, popularly known as the Warthog,
and closing more bases-have been stalled by Congress. And so, as a sign of the
times of Beltway brinkmanship and budget crises, the Pentagon continues to rely
on OCO to fill the gap.
Russell Rumbaugh, an analyst with the Stimson Center,
explains in an email that the 2015 base budget “went a long way to
institutionalizing the necessary annual funding,” but adds that there is “still
plenty of day-to-day funding still stuck in the war budget.” Personnel costs
will likely not be included in OCO after the 2015 budget, he says.
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