Reform Pentagon’s budget: Billions in runaway spending

The Pentagon budget is a real $800 billion-plus problem! Waste is endemic and critics point to instances of lack of transparency and accountability. House Resolution 4740 seeks to address a small part of these issues — the repeal of the requirement for the unfunded priorities lists.

After the defense budget has been voted upon, some agencies within the Defense Department, particularly those dealing with combat, guided missile and atomic energy, are currently required by law to submit to the appropriate Congressional committees a list of items which may or may not have already been requested during the budgeting process, but those agencies would like to have funded.

At least some of these items which have not been subjected to the normal budgeting process are then added to the overall defense budget.

In the 2024 budget, that amounted to $16 billion-plus (more than 200 times the total combined amount allocated to all peace-building accounts) added to an already bloated defense budget. Is it any wonder that we are in a state of “forever wars”?

Urge our New Mexico congressional delegation to eliminate unfunded priorities by passing House Resolution 4740 in the House and in the Senate, (after a Senate version of 4740 is introduced) would be an important step in streamlining the Pentagon budgeting process, for the following reasons:

All of the items requested in on unfunded priorities lists could and should be presented and voted upon through the usual budgeting process.

Defense Secretaries Lloyd Austin and Robert Gates have called for the elimination of these lists.

Money spent on unfunded priorities would be better spent on domestic needs, such as education and health care, which according to a Brown University study, would generate roughly twice as many jobs as the same amount spent on defense would create.

That money also could be better spent on diplomacy, peace building and funding of United Nations humanitarian efforts.

These lists make clean audits (which the Pentagon failed six years in a row) difficult because of the lack of transparency.

To the extent that expenses on the lists add to the national debt, they eventually lead to an increase of inflation and interest rates.