U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is not happy with the latest efforts in Congress to approve a budget, but for reasons that may surprise you.

The Missouri Democrat on Thursday questioned top military commanders on Congressional Republicans’ attempt to increase war funding rather than make the difficult choices to allow an increase in the base defense budget.

McCaskill, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and a former Missouri State Auditor, addressed the Senate Republican budget released last week, which she says would do nothing to end the across-the-board spending cuts threatening military readiness.

McCaskill says “budget gimmicks” are being used in the current budget plan. “Rather than confront sequestration and be honest about the challenges we have in our base budget, that we’ve all given a lot of time in terms of rhetoric to—we are now going further down the road of using the Overseas Contingency Operation account as a slush fund,” McCaskill said. “It’s not good for fiscal accountability, it’s not good for restoring faith in the American people that we can face the tough decisions, and not retreat to rhetoric and gimmickry that is not really true.”

McCaskill asked both General Lloyd Austin of U.S. Central Command and General David Rodriguez of U.S. Africa Command whether the Army can “buy back force strength,” which is necessary to avoid deep force cuts at Fort Leonard Wood, and whether the Navy would address ship building shortfalls with the Overseas Contingency Operation funds included in the budget. Both said no.

McCaskill also questioned General Austin about a potential determination that the continued U.S. efforts in Afghanistan now may require a new contingency operation, and therefore a new body of oversight.

“I’m told there is an effort underway to name a new Inspector General instead of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and I think if that determination is made, I want to make sure everybody understands that’s going to impose a lot of additional burdens in terms of oversight requirements on contracting…I don’t understand the value right now of changing IGs at this point when the projects are ongoing. If there is really a sincere attempt to replace him by labeling this a new contingency, somebody’s going to have some explaining to do to me, and to others on this committee on why that would be a good idea.”

“As we look at how to honestly confront sequestration, one of the ways is by being better stewards of the resources that we have allocated to these efforts.”

Last week, at an Armed Services Committee hearing on the Army and Air Force budget requests for 2016, McCaskill criticized the Republican budget, calling it a “fairytale” that would do nothing to reduce military spending cuts.