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 The contradiction is the legacy of an emergency war fund, started
in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, that has become a
favorite Washington way to sidestep the impact of fiscal constraints
on military spending.
The Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, has been tapped
to fund tens of billions of dollars in programs with questionable
links, or none, to wars, according to current and former U.S.
officials, analysts and budget documents.
The mutation of the fund's original purpose has long been tolerated
by Republican and Democrats. But its central role in a looming U.S.
government budget showdown has brought fresh focus to the war fund,
which is little known outside Washington.
This spring, Congressional Republicans abandoned any pretense that
OCO should be used for its stated purpose - the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and related operations. In a maneuver to increase
defense spending, they simply approved adding $38 billion in other,
non-war Pentagon spending to the account, bringing the total to $89
billion.
In doing so, lawmakers tapped OCO's budget magic: as a contingency
fund, it doesn't count against budget caps on defense and
non-defense spending imposed in 2011.
 Sen. John McCain acknowledged the move was "a contradiction of what
OCO was supposed to be all about many years ago, when we started it
as a result of Afghanistan and Iraq."
President Barack Obama has threatened to veto defense spending bills
over what the White House calls the OCO "gimmick." The
administration wants budget caps lifted for both defense and
domestic spending. It's one of the major sticking points in a
Washington budget struggle that could leave part or all of the U.S.
government unfunded after Sept. 30.
More is at stake than an accountants' dispute over different pots of
money, officials and analysts say.
"It's the worst thing that could happen to budget discipline," said
Gordon Adams, a former White House Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) official.
Pentagon leaders warn that the budget uncertainty will undermine
planning as Washington confronts challenges from Islamic State
militants to China's expansion in the South China Sea.
Obama campaigned for president in 2008 promising to end what he
called President George W. Bush's "abuse" of supplemental budgets to
fund wars. He has reined in OCO spending, which peaked in 2008 at
$187 billion - but only to a point.
"The difficulty was putting the genie back in the bottle," said a
former White House official, particularly after the budget caps were
imposed in 2011.
Obama proposed $51 billion in OCO spending for the fiscal year
beginning Oct. 1, along with a regular $534 billion defense budget.
But only about $25 billion of that would directly fund U.S.
combat-related operations, essentially the cost of keeping about
9,800 troops in Afghanistan this year, and fighting Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria, Reuters has learned from U.S. officials.
 Another $25 billion represents long-term Pentagon costs that have
gradually found their way into OCO, an administration official told
Reuters. Those costs, all sides agree, belong in the Pentagon's
normal annual spending - called the base budget.
For 2016, Obama requested $789 million in OCO funds to reassure
European partners worried about Russia and $2.1 billion for a
Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund to boost allies' security forces.
Such programs don't meet the definition of war spending, said former
OMB official Mark Cancian, who in 2009 helped write non-binding
criteria detailing what the war fund should pay for.
"Both sides, Congress and the Executive, contravened the criteria
when it was in their interest to do so," said Cancian, of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
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EXPANDING "GRAY AREAS"
The United States spent $1.6 trillion on the Iraq and Afghan wars
and related operations between fiscal years 2001 and 2014, the
nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in December.
But $81 billion of that was spent on "non-war" costs, CRS found. The
true figure is likely much higher: OCO money isn't audited to ensure
it was used for war operations.
"There's a lot of money in the OCO that should probably be in base
(budget)," Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work acknowledged last
year. "It just happened over 12 years."
Robert Hale, a former Pentagon comptroller, said budget supplemental
bills are supposed to pay "the added costs of war." Special danger
pay for troops and replacements for destroyed vehicles could be
included legitimately, but not regular salaries or new weapons
systems.
Over time, more and more OCO expenditures fell into "gray areas," he
said.
Experts say that a complete accounting of questionable OCO spending
may be impossible. But based on interviews and budget documents,
examples include:
- This year, Congress added $1 billion for a National Guard and
Reserve equipment account the Pentagon hadn't requested, as well as
$532 million for military construction worldwide. That includes a
hangar in Italy for a Navy submarine-hunting aircraft.
- Several billion dollars to transform the U.S. Army beginning in
2004 from a division-based force to a brigade-based one.
- $351 million this year for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense
shield.
Former officials and analysts pegged October 2006, as the date the
definition of war spending began to be stretched. Then-Deputy
Defense Secretary Gordon England instructed the military brass to
use supplemental budget funds for prosecuting "the longer war
against terror," not just the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The message was just think more broadly about what you put in your
war budget. Put more in there. And they did," said Todd Harrison, of
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Gordon could not be reached for comment.
Administration officials dispute they have violated the 2009
war-funding guidelines, arguing that Obama's programs meet OCO's
underlying premise of funding unanticipated costs.
In today's uncertain world, some kind of contingency fund will
likely be needed for years, experts say. OCO helped pay for the U.S.
response to West Africa's Ebola outbreak, for example.
"It's time to step back and redefine OCO," Hale said. But with a
budget battle and presidential campaign looming, that's unlikely to
happen soon, he added.
(Fixes name to England (not Gordon) in paragraph 32)
(Editing by Stuart Grudgings)
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