Congress just passed up a bipartisan, multi-billion-dollar opportunity to cut down on wasteful military spending. Meanwhile, some members think $895 billion for military spending is not enough.
In June, the House considered this year’s annual Pentagon spending bill, where Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced an amendment that would have defunded the Pentagon’s annual wishlists — commonly known as “unfunded priorities lists,” or UPLs.
The Department of Defense uses these lists to request tens of billions of dollars above the president’s already bloated military budget request. This year alone, the UPLs totaled $30.8 billion of additional programing, on top of an already massive $895 billion dollar defense budget request.
Although the amendment received bipartisan support, including 32 Republicans and a majority of House Democrats, it ultimately failed to pass with a vote of 161-251. But the fight to end these wishlists continues to gain momentum, fueled in part by dedicated members of Congress raising the issue within the defense budget process. Senator Elizabeth Warren recently introduced a related amendment to the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), highlighting that the push for a more balanced defense budget is far from over.
Wishlists Encourage Unsustainable Spending
The UPLs contribute to the United States’ ballooning military spending and compound an already dysfunctional Congressional budget process. In bypassing the formal budget process, they undermine responsible fiscal management and hinder efforts to rein in annual deficits and national debt. The lack of transparency and public disclosure also denies taxpayers the chance to hold the Pentagon accountable at a time when the institution has failed six consecutive audits.
These Pentagon wishlists have faced significant criticism over the years. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who helped to bring down wishlist costs by 90% from 2008 to 2009, called for a reckoning: “The US cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything.”
The UPLs contribute to the United States’ ballooning military spending and compound an already dysfunctional Congressional budget process.
Endless money fuels endless war, often at the expense of human needs at home and abroad. When lawmakers fund weapons and programs that even military leaders do not want, they are not making our country or the world safer.
Current Pentagon leadership, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Comptroller Mike McCord, also support repealing UPL requirements, with the latter calling them an ineffective “way to illuminate joint priorities.” Funding the military this way means that too often, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. The system fuels competition between military branches and makes coordinating a cohesive national defense strategy harder.
The Sprint Towards a Trillion Dollar Pentagon Budget
The resistance to common-sense policy reforms, like eliminating the Pentagon’s wishlists, is a symptom of a much larger problem: a dependence on military spending as a response to a rapidly changing world. There have been a variety of proposals to increase the military budget this year. These include Senator Roger Wicker’s proposal to increase it by $55 billion this year and bring it up to $1.25 trillion in a few years; the Senate Armed Services Committee’s authorization of $25 billion above the president’s budget request; and the Senate Appropriations Committee leadership’s emergency plan to boost military spending by $21 billion and non-military spending by $13.5 billion.
Wicker captures the political rhetoric used to justify these military spending increases in his recent op-ed, where he claims to be following in the footsteps of former president Ronald Reagan, who oversaw massive military spending that he justified as a means to foster “peace through strength.” He directly referenced UPLs to justify his massive spending plus up, citing the US Indo-Pacific command’s $11 billion UPL request as “vital in a Pacific fight.”
These unfunded priorities lists provide more hawkish members of Congress with political cover to push for unsustainable military spending increases, using the lists as another tool for funneling money back to defense contractors who contribute generously to election campaigns. Wicker, a staunch advocate for the usefulness of UPLs, is high on the recipient list of defense contractor campaign contributions, having already accepted $534,000 this election cycle. As President Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Answering the Demand for Transparency and Oversight
Now, Congress has an opportunity to rein in these UPLs once and for all. Bipartisan legislation to end the statutory requirement for the wishlists has been introduced in the House. In the Senate, a bipartisan amendment led by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Mike Lee, Mike Braun, and Chuck Grassley has been offered in their version of the NDAA. Yet, it’s unclear if this amendment will receive a vote.
Repealing the UPL mandate is something both sides of the aisle can get behind. As Senator Lee said, eliminating this prerequisite will “reduce costly reporting requirements and enhance the ability of Congress to carry out its constitutional duty to oversee the budgetary process and ensure the responsible use of taxpayer funds.” As the annual Pentagon budget nears $1 trillion, and recent polls show a majority of Americans want more regulations on Pentagon spending, repealing the UPL mandate is a common-sense, practical step in this direction.
