
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday set an overall defense funding level for fiscal year 2017 that provides a small increase over the levels set by last year’s budget agreement.The 302(b) allocations put forward by the committee specify a $516 billion base defense budget and $59 billion for the wartime spending account, also known as Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). The approval of the allocation allows the subcommittees to begin marking up the fiscal ’17 budget to that spending level.While OCO…