Republicans on April 29 reached a budget deal that allows Congress to avoid exceeding budget caps by increasing wartime funds, a victory for GOP defense hawks against fiscal conservatives.
The joint budget resolution–released by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.)–authorizes $96.3 billion in overseas contingency funding. That number is in line with the budgets the Senate and House drafted independently last month so that they could fund priorities laid out in the president’s fiscal year 2016 request, which kept OCO funding stable but surpassed congressionally-mandated caps.
According to the conference report, “the agreement supports overseas contingency operations funding at a level appropriate to meet the challenges posed by an increasingly dangerous security environment, and reflects a realistic ramp-down path for this funding over the budget window.”
Although the agreement will keep some fiscally conservative Republicans from trying to pare back military funding, the defense budget still faces an upward climb. House and Senate appropriators will still have to agree to the heightened OCO fund, and President Barack Obama has said increases to defense accounts must be accompanied by a boost to domestic spending.
Meanwhile, the House Armed Services Committee is debating amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act today. The authorization bill contains $38.3 billion in operations and maintenance funding that was moved from the base budget to OCO to keep it under limits imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011.