Overseas Contingency Operations Funding: Background and Status

Summary

The Department of Defense (DOD) estimates that Congress has appropriated $1.6 trillion for war-related operational costs of the DOD since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. When combined with an estimated $123.2 billion in related State Department and Foreign Operations appropriations, the DOD, Department of State (DOS), and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have received an estimated $1.7trillion for activities and operations in support of U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks.

Funding for these activities has been largely provided through supplemental appropriation acts or has been designated as an “emergency” or “Overseas Contingency Operation/Global War on Terror” (OCO/GWOT) requirement in annual agency budget requests—or both. Funds designated as such are not subject to procedural limits on discretionary spending in congressional budget resolutions or to the statutory discretionary spending limits established by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA). While there is no overall statutory limit on the amount of emergency or OCO/GWOT-designated spending, both Congress and the President have a fundamental role in determining how much OCO/GWOT and emergency spending is provided each fiscal year. Congress must designate any such funding as OCO/GWOT in statute on an account by account basis. The President is also required to designate it as such after it is appropriated in order for it to be available for expenditure.

Definitions of what constitutes emergency or OCO/GWOT activities and expenses have shifted over time, reflecting differing viewpoints about the extent, nature, and duration of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding designated OCO/GWOT has also been recently used to fund base budget requirements of the DOD and DOS and to provide funding to prevent or respond to crises abroad, including armed conflict, as well as human-caused and natural disasters. The first use of an OCO/GWOT designation in budgetary law was in the 2011 BCA. Prior to the BCA, the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (BBEDCA) only allowed “emergency” requirements to be excluded from budget control limits. The BCA added the designation “Overseas Contingency Operation/Global War on Terror” to the BBEDCA exemption, thereby providing Congress and the President with an alternate way to exclude funding from the BCA limits without using the “emergency” designation.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA) raised the BCA discretionary spending limits for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 and FY2017 for both the defense and nondefense categories, and also specified an expected level for OCO spending for those years. The President’s FY2017 OCO budget request of $58.8 billion for defense activities matches BBA-directed levels. DOD’s OCO budget primarily pays for deploying and supporting U.S. troops, conducting and supporting military operations, repairing war-worn equipment, and transporting troops and equipment to and from the war zone. In addition, OCO funding finances training for the Afghan and Iraqi security forces and other counterterrorism and partnership-building activities with key foreign partners around the world.

The DOD Comptroller has indicated that the majority of the FY2017 OCO request centers on supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan; Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria; and increased efforts to support European allies and deter Russian aggression—all while supporting what is referred to as a “partnership-focused approach to counterterrorism” and complying with the BCA funding caps. However, the President’s FY2017 DOD OCO request also includes $5.2 billion for base budget activities—normal military operations and procurement that could not be funded in the DOD’s base budget due to the BCA statutory limits.

The $14.9 billion in FY2017 OCO funds for the State Department is requested to “provide support to, respond to, recover from, or prevent crises abroad, including armed conflict, as well as human-caused and natural disasters.” Specifically, the DOS request includes funding to contribute to peacekeeping missions and special political missions, increase efforts to destroy the Islamic State, and sustain security programs and embassy construction at high risk posts.

In its FY2017 budget justification documents, DOS included a request that the BCA caps be further increased, stating that “the FY2017 President’s Budget assumes that further adjustments to the Budget Control Act’s discretionary spending limits will be needed to sustain these activities in FY2018.”

In marking-up the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2017, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) moved an additional $18.0 billion in requirements from the President’s DOD base budget request to the OCO budget. If enacted, the combined actions proposed by the Administration and the HASC would effectively exempt $23.1 billion in FY2017 funding for defense from the spending caps set by the BCA—without providing an equivalent increase in spending for nondefense programs. The Administration and the minority leadership in both congressional chambers have objected to allowing an increase in defense spending by raising the defense cap—or adding OCO spending for defense—without providing a comparable increase for nondefense spending in the overall federal budget. For that reason, the authorization and appropriation of OCO funding for FY2017 looms large over the policy debate as Congress considers the FY2017 federal budget.

For additional information on related FY2017 budget issues see CRS Report R44428, The Federal Budget: Overview and Issues for FY2017 and Beyond, by Grant A. Driessen, CRS Report R44454, Defense: FY2017 Budget Request, Authorization, and Appropriations, by Pat Towell and Lynn M. Williams, and CRS Report R44391, FY2017 State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Budget Request: In Brief, by Susan B. Epstein, Marian L. Lawson, and Alex Tiersky.