House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry’s exchange with DOD comptroller Mike McCord Wednesday revealed a lot about the growing frustration some members have with DOD’s expanding use of the sequester-immune overseas contingency operations account to fund non-emergency needs.
In a hearing about the fiscal year 2016 request, Thornberry asked McCord about how DOD determines what qualifies as emergency wartime operations spending, which is what the fund was established for.
But the account, commonly known as “OCO,” has been used for more than that. For example, it was used to procure future F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
McCord justified the spending, noting it was necessary “to buy some F-35s to replace aircrafts that were destroyed at Kandahar.”
In that surprise attack at Camp Bastion in 2012, Taliban fighters destroyed eight U.S. Marine Corps Harrier jets. The OCO request to use the emergency fund to replace the Harriers with F-35s was made in part because the Harriers haven’t been in production for more than a decade.
But the new fighter will not come online until at least this summer for the Marine Corps, and only several years later for the Navy and Air Force — well after any current timeline for combat needs in Afghanistan, where the Harriers were lost.
McCord said while the House Armed Services Committee approved that spending prior to Thornberry’s term as chairman, there was division on the issue.
There is still OCO spending in both the House and Senate 2016 requests; the House version gives the sequester-immune account $94 billion, and the Senate version hews to the White House request, seeking $58 billion for DOD and State contingency needs.
Thornberry requested DOD to provide an explanation of what qualifies for OCO spending, in case DOD’s needs are again funded through the supplemental fund in 2016.
“This is not the best way to run a railroad,” Thornberry said. “And I hope that we can have a different method of funding the department as we move down the many steps ahead in the budget process.”
“If, however, we end up with a substantial amount of OCO to make up for gaps in the base, then I want to understand what all of those restrictions, administrative or legislative, may be,” Thornberry said. “I don’t know how this is going to go. I just want to be ready.”
