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Inside the Pentagons Slush Fund
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of US News & World Report


US News & World Report, February 1, 2016
Posted: February 22nd, 2016
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/inside-the-pe...

The Overseas Contingency Operations budget ... was known from 2001 to 2009 as the supplemental and is now considered a de facto slush fund. It began as the war budget President George W. Bush needed for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan without having to go back to Congress every time the Defense Department needed to modify its main half-trillion-dollar budget. The Pentagon does not have to release details publicly on how specifically this money will be spent. As a result, [the OCO] has ballooned into an ambiguous part of the budget to which government financiers increasingly turn to pay for other, at times unrelated, costs. This year the proposed budget ... grew by $200 million despite thousands fewer combat troops in Afghanistan and, technically, none in Iraq. Janine Davidson, who is awaiting Senate confirmation to become undersecretary of the Navy, wrote last year about the perils of letting this budget remain unchecked. Adams believes the increased reliance on this budget fractures budget discipline for the Defense Department and demonstrates that normal budget process is completely broken. It leaves the Defense Department all the money it needs for operations and paying its bills, and then some. When youve done that, youve basically said to all the people who run the Pentagon, Youre awash with money. Priority-setting is no longer necessary.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing military corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


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