Actually, it wasn't. What it _was_ as a calculated effort to put extraordinary combat operations on a separate fiscal footing from normal training/etc. operations.

You might note, for example, that Clinton's budgets didn't contain budgetary line-items for, for example, Bosnia, or Kosovo, or Haiti, or E. Timor. Neither Bush Sr. nor Clinton put Somalia ops in the budget. Gulf War 1 was funded by extraordinary funding requests.

Nice trope, but factually inaccurate.