Congress shouldn’t be creating a new Pentagon slush fund

It’s been a strange, complicated year for Congressional decision making on the Pentagon budget. First came the debt ceiling agreement, where Congress rolled back domestic programs but left the Biden administration’s $886 billion request for national defense untouched. Now, final passage of the main bill authorizing Pentagon spending — the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — is hung up on culture war debates rather than debates about the hundreds of billions in expenditures at stake in the legislation.

But the biggest fight over the Pentagon budget is yet to come.. Hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers, R-AL, have argued that the current proposal of $886 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2024 is not enough. Instead, they are advocating for an emergency package that could arrive in Congress as early as later this month that would give them the opportunity to add tens of billions of dollars for the Pentagon beyond what is already contemplated.

On the flip side, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, ever mindful of commitments he made to Freedom Caucus members in exchange for his appointment, has said that it is “not time” for an emergency package for the Pentagon.

Even given these complexities, there will almost certainly be an effort to boost the Pentagon budget, likely tied to a new aid package to Ukraine. This would be reminiscent of what was done from 2011 to 2020, when Congress and the Pentagon used the war budget — officially known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account (OCO) — to fund hundreds of billions of dollars of Pentagon programs that had nothing to do with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. OCO essentially served as a safety valve — a slush fund — to evade upper limits on the Pentagon budget established by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Using war spending to fund unrelated items was a bad idea during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is a terrible idea now. It’s important to keep supporting Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself, in tandem with a diplomatic track aimed at ending the war on terms acceptable to Kyiv. However, mixing Ukraine aid with additional funding for pork barrel projects that only benefit key members of Congress will muddy the waters of any debate on the size and conditions under which additional military assistance to Ukraine should proceed.

$886 billion is more than enough to provide an effective defense. This military budget is already hundreds of billions of dollars higher than at the heights of the Korean or Vietnam wars or the peak of the Cold War. It is three times what China spends annually on its military, and ten times what Russia spends.

All that money is being spent on an overly ambitious strategy that calls for the U.S. to police the world and to win a war with Russia or China rather than working to prevent such conflicts from occurring in the first place. Ukraine’s ability to hold off Russia without U.S. boots on the ground underscores the fact that a large army is not necessary to address socalled great power conflict.

The defense department doesn’t need more money. It needs more spending discipline. The Pentagon is the only major federal agency that has failed to pass an audit, a circumstance that invites waste, fraud, and abuse. Price gouging by contractors is systematic, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, has pointed out — most recently in a July 27th hearing. Her findings were reinforced by an May investigation by CBS 60 Minutes — price gouging by contractors is rampant, wasting untold billions year in and year out.

To add insult to injury, the nation’s largest weapons makers are spending tens of billions of dollars buying back their own stock to boost share prices. These expenditures do everything to enrich the companies, their executives and their shareholders, while contributing nothing to the defense of the country. Throwing more money at the Pentagon will only incentivize this counterproductive profiteering.

Congress should spend more time debating what our defense strategy should be going forward and what weapons are needed to carry it out. Instead, they routinely bankroll parochial projects that bring funds into their states and districts regardless of whether the projects supported by this extra spending align with any meaningful defense plan.

For all of the above reasons, Congress should avoid using the issue of Ukraine aid to lavish more money on a Pentagon that is already overfunded and underperforming.

Congress should spend more time debating what our defense strategy should be going forward and what weapons are needed to carry it out.