The White House is placing new limits on war spending, making it more difficult for the Pentagon to outmaneuver its new budget caps, according to recent guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Instead, the White House wants the Pentagon to start funding more activities through its base budget, shutting off a potential loophole to the Budget Control Act passed in August/…/ The Senate, in its versions of the defense appropriations and authorization bills, has already made use of this loophole, shifting billions out of the base budget and into the contingency bill, while still complying with the spending caps for 2012.
"We're likely to see that again in 2013, so that will, in effect, soften the decline in defense spending, if they use that outlet," Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said after the congressional supercommittee failed to come to a debt-cutting agreement by its deadline last month.