Creative accounting reportedly masks $3B in DOD budget request

The Defense Department avoided mandated spending caps by moving $3 billion of military pay and benefits from the base budget to the war budget, Foreign Policy reports.

The 2013 budget shows a decrease of $6 billion for pay and benefits in the base -- or ongoing -- budget, while $3 billion increase shows up in the same category for the war budget even though troops will be withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Foreign Policy.

The base budget must comply with discretionary spending caps in the Budget Control Act of 2011, but the war budget does not have that constraint. The budget request is in line with the adminstration's recently announced plan to reduce the number of troops in the Army and Marines, experts told Foreign Policy.