CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Oct. 24, 2011 – 10:34 p.m.
Change Sought in Scope of State Department's Contingency Fund
By Emily Cadei, CQ Staff
The State Department, in addition to its core budget request for fiscal 2012, also sought funding for a separate war-related account to cover what Secretary
Senate appropriators, however, want to use the account to also fund operations taking place far beyond those three countries, including in Yemen, Somalia, Egypt, Indonesia and Colombia.
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The Senate’s State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill (
The bill includes the $8.7 billion requested by State for the OCO account, the first such proposal by that department. But Senate appropriators would supply less than the department requested for diplomatic operations, economic support and narcotics control in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and instead would add funding for 10 other accounts not originally requested by the administration — including nearly $50 million for peacekeeping in Somalia; more than $60 million for the State Department inspector general and special inspector generals for Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction; and $100 million for migration and refugee assistance for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Colombia, Somalia, Kenya and Yemen.
A Senate aide said Democratic appropriators’ reinterpretation of the OCO account was done with the support of the Obama administration. The argument was that unanticipated, short-term needs for U.S. assistance have cropped up well beyond the three frontline states where the United States is engaged in military operations. The “Arab spring,” the famine in the horn of Africa and counternarcotics operations in Central and South America have demanded a rapid diplomatic response not envisioned in the administration’s budget request.
By shifting funds from the core budget into OCO, which faces less scrutiny, lawmakers freed up more money for traditional diplomatic and development priorities.
The State Department’s base budget is already under pressure from Republicans looking to reduce foreign aid spending.
On top of that, the debt limit law enacted in August (PL 112-25) imposed new caps on the State Department’s base budget, a move that also played into the decision to take a more expansive approach to the OCO account, an aide said.
Replacing Supplementals
During the George W. Bush administration, contingency operations such as the current efforts in Afghanistan, as well as the humanitarian response in Somalia, would have been funded as part of a supplemental spending bill and passed separately from the regular appropriations process. Congress also paid for much of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq this way.
When President Obama came into office, he promised to put an end to those sorts of budget maneuvers and fund all national security costs through the regular appropriations process. So instead of supplementals, the Pentagon requested funding for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq through the OCO account.
The State Department, facing rising costs in both those war zones as the military presence is drawing down, decided to adopt the same practice for fiscal 2012. Now lawmakers are starting to regard it as a funding vehicle similar to the supplementals of the past.
Change Sought in Scope of State Department's Contingency Fund
The Defense Department requested $118.9 billion for its Overseas Contingency Operation budget, and appropriators in the House and Senate have complied in their versions of the spending bill (
House Republican appropriators proved willing to fully fund the State Department’s OCO request under the rationale that it was helping the military. But they sought savings in the core budget, carving out more than $7 billion from the administration’s request for accounts that fund humanitarian aid, global health and emergency response programs.
Under the debt limit law, security funding for fiscal 2012 — which includes appropriations for the Defense Department, the State Department, foreign operations, military construction, the Homeland Security Department and the Veterans Affairs Department — is capped at $684 billion.
Senate Appropriations Chairman
Funds for OCO, however, are outside the cap, which many observers believe is a significant loophole in the debt limit law.
Senate appropriators, however, did not try to take advantage of that technicality to boost the overall spending amount above what the administration requested for the OCO account. Rather, they opted to reduce war-related civilian spending and rearranged what was included in the account, so that more programs could be funded under the capped core budget.