Inhofe: Reid sequester replacement ‘undermines national security’

Reid’s plan draws from the Pentagon’s Overseas Contingency
Operations account, which was set up to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

{mosads}The Pentagon has $81 billion budgeted in the 2013 OCO
account, a $34 billion drop from 2012 due to the end of the war in Iraq and the
Afghanistan drawdown. That number will continue to fall as the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is reduced, although the Pentagon has not yet said what it will be for 2014.

President Obama has also proposed budget savings in his
budgets from reductions in war spending in order to pay for other domestic
programs.

Republicans have criticized war savings as a budgeting
gimmick, because war spending is added onto the base budget.

“Whether OCO is the mother of all gimmicks, or just a
glaring one — everybody other than the majority leader evidently agrees on one
thing: it’s the height of fiscal irresponsibility,” Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday.