The Department of Defense budget request, like any budget, reflects the priorities of those who wrote it. But in recent years, those priorities have often been superseded by investments that are clearly lower priorities. Beginning in FY 2017, Congress has asked the military and combatant commands to: Submit a list of low priority projects The Department of Defense fell short of its budget request, Up to $850 billion this year.
Although these list items are called unfunded priorities, Congress often funds these items, often at the expense of actual priorities included in the Department of Defense budget request. As Congress begins to develop the Fiscal Year 2025 Department of Defense budget, this year’s Unfunded Priorities List (UPL) is already being worked into the budget at the expense of higher priority items.
The basic text of the House National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes additional$355 millionResponse to drone countermeasures programsArmy UPLBut to make room for these and many other budget additions while staying within the budget caps agreed to last year, lawmakers cut funding from a wide range of items, including $1 billion from the Army’s procurement request, $240 million from the Army’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) account and $420 million from the Army’s Operations and Maintenance account.
This clearly runs counter to the priorities of the military leaders who submitted these must-have lists.
When Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George submitted the required UPL this year, he wrote at the top of the list that “the Army’s FY25 budget request maintains alignment with the National Defense Strategy and combat mission capabilities” and requested that “these unfunded priorities do not displace any portion of the Army’s FY25 PB.” [President’s Budget] request.”
Similarly, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti Preamble to the Navy’s Mandatory UPL “These unfunded items do not take priority over the President’s FY2025 budget, and we urge Congress not to cut the FY2025 budget submission to support these unfunded items,” he emphasized.
This is not to say that counter-drone programs should not be funded. In fact, the Army has about$470 millionAnti-drone programs in the base budget request. It is Congress’ prerogative to modify the President’s budget request, and among the programs facing cuts are:F-35certainly earned them.
But the military’s civilian leadership assessed the budget holistically and determined funding levels that considered the needs of the entire service. UPL does not take such a holistic approach. Instead, it serves as a way for lawmakers to show off how they fund the more glamorous and highly politicized parts of the Defense Department’s budget, such as projects requested by Indo-Pacific Command, while cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from meatier parts of the budget, such as the operations and maintenance account.
Worse yet, the Pentagon has become so accustomed to these dynamics that some suspect it is intentionally leaving some of its real priorities out of the budget in the hopes that Congress will step in and provide the funds.
The Defense Department’s budgeting process should not be an all-you-can-eat buffet for lawmakers, nor should the Department be encouraged to base its budget on bets about which projects Congress will fund through the UPL.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) attempted to address the issue when the House Armed Services Committee reformed the NDAA last week, The amendment simply eliminated the requirement. For these lists, this would revert to the pre-2017 status quo, when military branch leaders and combatant commanders could submit UPLs at their discretion.
This amendment would go a long way to curbing the unnecessary expenditures that these lists create, while still leaving military leaders the option to fund items they truly consider essential. Unfortunately, the Committee rejected this amendment.
If lawmakers are serious about meeting the real priorities of the Department of Defense and the American people, not just this year but for years to come, they need to get the national debt under control.Over $34.5 trillionAnd growing. Congressional Budget OfficeBy 2024If we were to spend more money on interest payments to service the national debt than we would on our military. That’s a huge amount of money that doesn’t go to national security or domestic spending needs. It’s simply paying interest on the nation’s credit card.
Avoiding unnecessary spending and adhering to budget caps are essential to controlling the debt, and repealing the UPL requirement would help on both counts. As the Senate Armed Services Committee prepares to take up the NDAA in June, it should do what the House failed to do and put an end to the harmful UPL requirement.
Gabe Murphy is a policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group that advocates for transparency and points out wasteful spending.
