Budget blinders
     The Obama administration requested that Congress appropriate an additional $5.6 billion on Nov. 10 to finance the fight against ISIS.  This is in addition to the $59 billion already in the 2015 defense budget for "Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO)".  In 2014 more than $30 billion of the $80 billion in this account was spent for things totally unrelated to winding down the Afgan war.  Congress has not asked for an accounting of what the $30 billion was spent on but does know that the Pentagon uses the account to circumvent congressionally imposed spending caps on the Pentagon.  The OCO account is not subject to the spending caps.  This became evident when the Pentagon asked Congress a few weeks ago if it could use OCO funds to support the troubled F-35 fighter program.  The F-35 is not yet certified for combat so can have no impact on the Afgan war or ISIS in 2015.  The House Defense Appropriations Committee denied the request.  If the Pentagon could take money out of the existing $59 billion OCO budget for the troubled F-35 why does it need $5.6 billion more to fight ISIS?  Might it be because the fear of ISIS is easier to sell than the troubled and controversial F-35 and the Pentagon sees another way to get more funding?  The Pentagon's bureaucratic error was asking for permission rather than forgiveness.
     Congress did the right thing by denying the request but should ask some tough questions of the Pentagon as a follow up......unless they don't want to acknowledge that the military-industrial-congressional complex is still alive and well.