Congress plays active role in the military spending problem

Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°84 | 27 May 2021

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Situation

Biden’s official budget request is supposed to drop tomorrow. That it’s set to be released the Friday before Memorial Day weekend suggests that it’ll be a dumpster fire of a budget proposal. The topline figures released last month also suggest that, as does the political track record of the proposal’s author (Biden).

Congress probably won’t improve the situation w/r/t Biden’s desired levels of military spending, at least willingly, based on the legislative body’s previous behavior. Engagement with Congress is key moving forward.

Study

I compared how much the President requested for the Pentagon vs. how much Congress eventually enacted for the Pentagon between FY2002 and FY2020.

During this span Congress added $247.8 billion more than the total amount requested in the President’s initial budget requests for FY2002-2020. That works out to about +$13 billion per annual budget.

Are these increases driven by Congress?

Not entirely, no. DOD requests supplemental appropriations* all the time, so it’s not just Congress adding funds to existing line items in the Pentagon budget or adding/funding new military programs altogether. But unless a major thing happens (like a pandemic), few other agencies do this/are granted this privilege. And because Congress is ultimately the body that signs off on them, these supplemental appropriations are ultimately Congress’ problem.

*Example of a supplemental appropriation
DOD requested over $9 billion in additional (“emergency”) funds for FY2020 “to cover hurricane, storm, and flooding recovery costs that the Department is not typically expected to absorb.”

Looks like Congress ended up giving DOD $8 billion for this (and then billions more through the CARES Act).

Thanks for your time,

Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)

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