“BREAKING DEFENSE” By Julia Gledhill
“Just days after the Department of Defense failed its fifth consecutive financial audit, the Pentagon submitted its second unfunded priorities list to Congress, requesting an additional $25 billion on top of the over $24 billion wish list submitted to Congress earlier this year.
The United States Congress should not be the Pentagon’s Santa Claus. But even if it were, who writes a second letter to ask for more when they’re already on the naughty list?”
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“Beyond the stated budget, it’s become routine that the Pentagon also hands Congress a list of programs it would like to fund but does not explicitly have money for: the unfunded priorities. While the “optional” wish list could seem like a good way to offer lawmakers and the military some flexibility, in the op-ed below, POGO’s Julia Gledhill argues it’s actually become another barrier to DoD transparency when it comes to taxpayer dollars.
Congress requires military services and commands to produce these wish lists, which outline items that don’t make it into the Pentagon’s official budget request. And while the Department of Defense has submitted these wish lists for decades, publicly available records suggest this is first time the department has sent Congress two in one year.
There are no public indications this list came from an additional request by lawmakers, either. Arriving so late in the congressional budget process, it directly appeals to a select group of decision makers finalizing the annual defense policy bill, rather than to Congress as a whole.
It’s increasingly clear that if you give the Pentagon an inch, it will take a mile. Lawmakers show the Pentagon special treatment by requiring these lists; while government-wide wish lists would of course be wasteful, it’s telling that no other department has the same requirement.
Unfunded wish lists circumvent the White House’s strategic guidance for the department and potentially harms non-defense spending; lawmakers with equities on, say, labor or agriculture committees should be against them on that basis alone. A second wish list, targeting only the top eight defense authorizers and appropriators? That should be the kind of thing that pushes other members of Congress to finally level the playing field and eliminate wish lists for good.
Being strong on defense can’t just mean throwing money at the Pentagon — it should mean prioritizing military readiness and holding the Department of Defense accountable for wasteful spending. The Pentagon has proven that it is not a good steward of Americans’ tax dollars. It hasn’t just failed its fifth consecutive audit, it was actually unable to give [PDF] auditors enough information to issue a clean opinion for the second year in a row. If the Department of Defense isn’t managing its money well now, it’s hard to believe throwing them another $25 billion will make Americans significantly safer, especially given the department’s infamous struggles with acquisition programs.
But Congress should rid itself of the Pentagon’s dreadful wish lists for an even more fundamental reason: These lists bypass the actual budgetary process. The Pentagon has developed the largest defense budget on the planet every year since at least 1949, supposedly ensuring that critical needs and priorities are properly supported in its formal budget — crying poor seems laughable.
Unfunded priority lists always circumvent and undermine the budget process, and sending Congress a second wish list during the lame duck session is outrageous because debate is essentially impossible. Committees have already held all their open discussions on the staggering $830-plus billion Pentagon budget. Now, congressional leaders have retreated behind closed doors to hash out the differences between a House version of the budget and a presumptive Senate version that itself was never actually debated or voted on by the full Senate. The Pentagon’s wish list could be a Hail Mary attempt to influence negotiations on the defense topline at the final stage in the policymaking process.
With Congress’s packed schedule, it will be up to a handful of congressional leaders to decide if and how to fund programs the Pentagon didn’t consider important enough for its formal budget request. In other words, a few individuals will likely decide whether or not they should approve an additional $25 billion on top of at least $839 billion in military spending already approved by the House.
Wish lists aren’t typically publicly accessible, either. Media outlets and organizations often gain access to parts of them, but by and large, only lawmakers see them. Bloomberg News appears to be the only outlet to gain access to the Pentagon’s latest list, making it extremely difficult for the public to evaluate the Pentagon’s request.
Lawmakers should be offended by the Pentagon’s audacious move to submit a second wish list because it encourages some of the most powerful members of Congress to make significant additions to the defense budget without substantive feedback from their colleagues. Plus, it’s impossible for a department already struggling with financial mismanagement to develop fiscal discipline when Congress funds its wish list requests outside the formal budget process. By repealing statutory requirements for the military to produce these unfunded priorities lists, Congress could encourage military branches and commands to critically analyze and reshape their budgets. In so doing, the military would begin to make the tradeoffs necessary to improve financial management and military readiness.
After all, neither Congress nor the Pentagon can address the security threats of tomorrow without accountability and oversight today. Increasing the amount of money the Pentagon handles, much less the weapon systems it develops, only exacerbates its management challenges.
The United States Congress should not be the Pentagon’s Santa Claus. But even if it were, who writes a second letter to ask for more when they’re already on the naughty list?”
Julia Gledhill is an analyst in the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight.
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