Budget Deal Offers Relief, Uncertainty

WASHINGTON, December 2, 2015 — Defense Department funding from the recent two-year budget deal was hard to achieve and sets the department up fairly well for the near future, the Defense Department Comptroller said here this week, adding that uncertainty remains in the long term.  Mike McCord, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the increase provided by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, or BBA15, gave the department 98 percent of what it asked for in fiscal year 2016 -- not counting $8 billion in relief for overseas contingency operations, or OCO.  "For '17 it's a little less, about 96 percent without the OCO relief, maybe 97 percent with it," McCord said.