On the recordApril 29, 2015
I am pleased to offer this amendment with my colleague, Mr. Mulvaney. And now that we have gotten beyond the sort of procedural objections, let's go to the substance of this. This is the first appropriations bill that we have on the floor that raises the question about the budgets that were passed in both the House and the Senate. As I think our colleagues know well by this point, both those budgets engage in an incredible accounting scam with respect to how we fund the Department of Defense and how we fund our military operations. For years, we have distinguished between the moneys that we spend on our ongoing defense programs, called the base budget, and the moneys set aside in the war account, the so-called overseas contingency account funds. What has happened here is that the President, on the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our military leadership, has requested the amount that is necessary to address our overseas contingency operations. But instead of abiding by that request and what was necessary, the Republican budget does this end-run and ends up using our overseas contingency account as a slush fund for funds that have been in the base defense budget. As I was indicating earlier, Mr. Chairman, this accounting scam, the sleight of hand, was something that the Republican Budget Committee just last year strongly objected to and indicated that it violated the budget process.…
