Time to curb the Pentagon’s multi-billion-dollar wish lists

 

If Congress Wanted to, It Could Improve Acquisition Now There’s a hawkish congressional mandate that’s being abused to throw good money after bad toward the Pentagon’s (already massively bloated) annual budget: unfunded priorities lists. Congress requires that military services submit a list of unfunded priorities at the end of the budget process each year. For decades, these lists have been used to circumvent debate and request money from Congress that might not be approved otherwise. These wasteful wish lists tack billions of dollars onto the budget each year. Unfunded priorities lists have become such a sure-fire way to boost defense spending without due diligence that it has become a common tactic for branches to put lower-priority items into the base budget and then put higher-priority items in wish lists, so Congress has no choice but to approve their requests. But Congress doesn’t need to keep piling billions onto the defense budget. As of last month, there’s a motion in Congress to bring an end to the unfunded priorities list mandate. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently said that he would support ending these mandates in order to enforce more fiscal discipline into a rapidly changing U.S. military. It’s time to hold Congress accountable and cut these wasteful wish lists! You can read more about the unfunded priorities lists, and several other ways Congress can finally bring accountability to Pentagon spending, on our website. Thanks for reading. Geoff Wilson Director of the Center for Defense Information Project On Government Oversight Contribute

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