On the recordMay 17, 2012
I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for including in this en bloc amendment an amendment that I and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Mulvaney) offered to ensure that we budget honestly. We have something called the Overseas Contingency Operations Account, or OCO, and this we fear is sometimes used to put in items that we don't want to become part of the budget, that are above the budget, or outside of the budget. This amendment will ensure that those items in this account are war related and not simply items to get around budget constraints in the budget that we've established for defense. I thank the gentleman for putting this in. This is an important amendment. We've got to ensure that we budget honestly, and then make sure in the future we know what our budget is, and we know what accounts are doing. This is a good step in that direction. {time} 2700
