The Pentagon is the only government agency that benefits from having two separate budgets. Beyond the normal of "baseline budget," there is the "Overseas Contingency Operation" fund (OCO), which is money that is supposed to go to wartime activities.
Well, that's the theory. Gordon Adams, emeritus professor of international politics at American University, tells Reason TV that this second budget is ruining fiscal responsibility at the Pentagon.
"Pentagon civil servants and admirals and generals are no more stupid than anybody else. They figured out over time that this was great," says Adams, "if [they] could not get some of the stuff they wanted in the regular budget, well [they] put it in the extra budget."
For instance, OCO spent about $300 million dollars fornew propellers for nuclear submarines—a cost that probably did not help the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Studies by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and the Project on Government Oversight indicates that approximately $30 billion was spent on non-war related items from the OCO budget in 2014.
https://reason.com/blog/2016/01/05/new-at-reason-tv-pentagon-war-funding-us
Well, that's the theory. Gordon Adams, emeritus professor of international politics at American University, tells Reason TV that this second budget is ruining fiscal responsibility at the Pentagon.
"Pentagon civil servants and admirals and generals are no more stupid than anybody else. They figured out over time that this was great," says Adams, "if [they] could not get some of the stuff they wanted in the regular budget, well [they] put it in the extra budget."
For instance, OCO spent about $300 million dollars fornew propellers for nuclear submarines—a cost that probably did not help the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Studies by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and the Project on Government Oversight indicates that approximately $30 billion was spent on non-war related items from the OCO budget in 2014.
https://reason.com/blog/2016/01/05/new-at-reason-tv-pentagon-war-funding-us
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