Chris Van Hollen: “I would just observe, in response to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania on the Appropriations Committee, that…”

“I would just observe, in response to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania on the Appropriations Committee, that our military leadership has said that the funds that are requested for this purpose under OCO are not OCO funds, that they are not war-related funds. That is coming from the Department of Defense. That is coming from the folks who put together the budgets for the Department of Defense. So to just claim that somehow these expenditures, which have been described by Mr. Mulvaney, are now somehow part of the war effort as opposed to the ongoing defense budget is to say to the military leadership that they don't understand how their budgets work. I think they do understand how their budgets work. We are trying to make sure that we protect the integrity of the process so that people can't be using the war account as a slush fund, which is exactly what this measure does.”