McCain endorses House plan to boost defense spending | TheHill: McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, earlier in the week dismissed using the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund to increase defense spending as “a gimmick.”
He explained his change of mind by arguing the House path is preferable to the Senate Budget Committee’s proposal to create a defense reserve fund as a placeholder for a future debate over defense spending levels.
“I am with some reluctance endorsing the idea of the OCO,” he told reporters. “I don’t like OCOs. I think they should have gone away some time ago. But if that’s the only way to get the required level of defense spending, I would support what the House did.
“I will reluctantly endorse a proposal such as the House enacted,” he said.
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) has allotted $523 billion to the Pentagon’s base budget, including more than $90 billion for its emergency war account.
The Senate budget goes in the other direction by creating a new budget point of order limiting the use of the overseas contingency fund.
