Publication

This report looks at how the US military’s Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget, which was initially designed to provide emergency war funding, has been increasingly used for other purposes. As a result, the text’s authors worry that the OCO budget could endanger national security, primarily by 1) undermining budget controls and thereby contributing to larger deficits; 2) generating insecurity in the defense workforce and for defense suppliers; and 3) creating long-term uncertainty in defense planning. Given these latent pathologies, the authors conclude that it’s time to wind down OCO funding and lay out how it should be done.