2016 MATTERS FOR THE SAME REASON 1992 DID:

For nearly fourteen years, the U.S. military has been on a war footing. Extraordinary amounts of money--often in excess of $100 billion dollars each year--have been appropriated beyond the military's base budget to fund operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. At the peak of the Iraq surge in late 2007, $211 billion was allocated for the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund, on top of $541 billion in base spending.

Today, even as most of our troops have redeployed from Afghanistan and Iraq, the OCO fund has remained high. Atop a base budget of $496 billion, Congressional leaders have added an OCO of roughly $89 billion. By contrast, President Obama has requested a base budget of $534 billion with an OCO of $51 billion.

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