As the Defense Department prepares to send another 615 troops to Iraq, one prominent Republican is shifting attention to the United States’ other war, Afghanistan.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), chairman of the Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, is calling on the Obama administration to submit a budget supplemental to Congress to pay for extra troops in Afghanistan through 2017.

“I am still waiting [on the budget request] and am deeply concerned that Congress has yet to receive a funding request for these critical missions,” Wilson wrote in a Sept. 27 letter. “My concern is not about the troops levels … my concern in is committing troops without a supplemental funding request to support the mission.”

President Barack Obama announced in July that almost 3,000 more troops would be staying in Afghanistan than expected.

Those troops were not budgeted for in the 2017 budget and therefore the administration needs Congress to tack on extra funding to the overseas contingency operations (OCO) fund.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the Defense Department would deliver a supplemental request to Congress in November.

“This reflects the seizing of opportunities by the President, opportunities that are good for us.  So it’s a very natural thing to do and a good thing to do,” Carter told reporters Sept. 26, at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. “There is a [monetary] range.  And we’re going to continue to refine that … we [will] continue to refine those estimates while [Congress is] out of session and have a completed estimate when they come back in November hopefully to complete the budget in its entirety.”

Carter said DoD has been planning the supplemental since the spring.

Wilson is not the first congressional member to urge the White House to send over its supplemental request.

After Obama’s announcement that more troops would stay in Afghanistan, House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) urged DoD to come up with a spending plan.

“This budget does not have room for the troops [the President] is committing.  For all of the bluster about funding troops in harm’s way, it is the President who proposes to extend the vital mission without any resources behind it.  The White House must submit a supplemental funding request to accommodate troop levels in Afghanistan immediately,” Thornberry said.

A supplemental may be a loophole in the budget rules to spend money on wars by avoiding sequestration, but it brings up concerns over how supplemental funds are being used.

OCO has been taking criticism from military officials and experts for years.

“OCO has become a ‘slush fund,’ with the sole purpose of providing the Pentagon support above and beyond the [sequestration] budget caps,” states a May study from the Stimson Center.

As the fund has become more ingrained in DoD culture, it has been used less as a means to pay for war expenses and more of a way to worm around the rules of sequestration.

OCO funding is not subjected to sequestration caps. So when Congress can’t fit important DoD programs into the over-packed suitcase that is the base budget, it just sneaks it into OCO.

OCO got so big and was allowing for so much extra defense funding while leaving domestic spending to pay by the rules of sequestration that the 2015 budget deal put a cap on OCO. But now, this new supplemental may bypass that cap too.

The House proposed in its 2017 defense authorization bill a maneuver that would require Congress to vote on two OCO type funds in one fiscal year. The tactic is a way for Congress to pay for more military end strength and a higher military pay raise.

The bill takes $18 billion from OCO to pay for the increases, leaving war funds to dry up in April 2017. At that point, Congress would have to create another supplemental to pay for the wars through the end of the year.

Critics worry the measure could leave troops without funding if Congress can’t come to an agreement and pass a bill authorizing the second fund by April.

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