Just before breaking for the August recess, Congress completed its work on the Fiscal Year 2001 Defense Department Appropriations Act. The legislation provides $289.6 billion, $5.1 billion more than requested by the Clinton Administration. Added to this amount is the $8.8 billion Military Construction Act, and about $13 billion from the Energy and Water Appropriations Act, which funds the nuclear weapons programs of the Department of Energy. In all, FY'01 Pentagon funding totals over $310 billion. President Clinton signed the defense appropriations bill into law on August 9.

In what has become in recent years as much of an annual Washington tradition as the blossoming of the cherry trees, Congress added substantial funding for programs not requested by the Pentagon. CDI has identified $3.3 billion in funds added by either the House or Senate for unrequested programs. In addition, CDI has identified nearly $350 million in funding added by members of the House-Senate Conference Committee (which wrote the final version of this legislation) that not only was not requested by the Pentagon but was not even included in the initial bills passed by either the House or the Senate.

Armed Services Committee member Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and Budget Committee Member Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), both staunch Pentagon supporters, have been highly critical of Congress' willingness to load up defense spending legislation with unrequested or unnecessary spending. During Senate debate on final passage of the Pentagon appropriations measure, they stated that they had identified over $7 billion in unrequested funds which had been added by Congress.

 
Add-Ons: A Tradition

Congressional add-ons to annual spending bills are generally characterized as efforts by members of Congress to funnel federal dollars into their home states or to fund pet projects, and this very often is the case. This practice, which is pervasive and has a long history, is considered to be a fundamental part of an elected official's job description. In fact, politicians who fail to secure significant federal contracts for their districts — who don't "bring home the bacon" — may find that this failure becomes a re-election issue.

Congressional add-ons are so much a part of the federal budget process that in some cases they have effectively become institutionalized. A prime example is that of the National Guard. Because the Guard, during peacetime, comes under the control of the individual states and not the federal government (they have to be federalized by the President in times of war or during states of emergency), the Pentagon includes only modest funding for the Guard in its annual budget requests. They know that governors and state Guard commanders will contact their congressional delegations and that the money will be added. And in fact, Congress adds roughly $600 million to the Pentagon budget each year for the Guard and Reserve.

Congressional add-ons are not limited to Pentagon spending legislation. The Treasury-Postal Service Appropriations Act for FY'01 includes $88 million added by conferees for restoration of the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, a sum that was neither requested by the Administration nor included in either the original House or Senate version of the legislation. But because the Defense Department represents over 50% of annual discretionary spending — those funds on which Congress must act each year to spend — and because it is easier politically to add funding in the name of "national security," the Pentagon budget is one of the most popular vehicles for congressional add-ons.

Conversely, not all additions to the Pentagon's spending package are merely vehicles for bringing federal dollars into a member's district. Some represent important policy initiatives. The FY'01 Defense Appropriations Act includes $200 million to improve prescription drug benefits for military retirees which, while not requested by the Pentagon, was broadly supported in both the House and Senate.

 
A Breakdown in the Process

As already noted, the practice of adding unrequested funds to annual spending bills is not new nor is it necessarily inappropriate, since bureaucrats in executive agencies, when preparing the President's annual budget submission, cannot foresee all possible contingencies. Moreover, these federal employees are not directly accountable to the American public. For this reason the Constitution places the "power of the purse" in the hands of Congress — the voters' elected representatives — as a check on the power of the executive branch. But used inappropriately, congressional add-ons undermine the integrity of the federal budget process.

So too does the recent extensive use of emergency supplemental spending legislation. The Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 imposed aggregate federal spending caps. Specific caps are set by the annual Congressional Budget Resolution, and if spending is increased in one account, corresponding cuts in other accounts have to be used to offset the increases. However, in order to provide the federal government with flexibility in responding to unanticipated events — such as wars or natural disasters — the BBA permits spending in excess of the caps without offsets provided that Congress and the President agree to declare the spending to be "emergency."

In recent years Congress, with the Administration's acquiescence, has used the emergency spending process to boost federal spending substantially while still claiming to be in compliance with the Balanced Budget Act. Much of this funding has gone to the Pentagon, and while some of it has been for actual unexpected expenditures — U.S. participation in "Operation Allied Force" in Yugoslavia, for example — much has gone for non-emergency spending.

In Fiscal Year 2000 alone, $21 billion in "emergency" funding — $8 billion of which went to the Pentagon — was tucked into a massive omnibus spending bill that was pushed through Congress at the eleventh hour. In all, over the last four years, Congress has designated over $30 billion in Pentagon spending as "emergency."

Senator Gramm has been particularly critical of Congress' practice of using emergency supplemental appropriations as a way to boost Pentagon funding. He believes that Pentagon supporters find the prospect of large federal budget surpluses too good to resist as they look for ways to boost military spending. "The surplus is burning a hole in our pockets," he said during Senate deliberations on this year's Pentagon spending package.

The Military Enters the Fray

Probably the most disturbing trend in recent years has been the increasingly public involvement of senior military officials in the budgeting process.

As recently as three years ago, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) testified to Congress that the proposed levels of military spending were adequate to meet mission requirements and ensure the readiness of U.S. forces. Since then, however, the services have lobbied hard to secure additional funding. As a result, Congress has padded special spending packages intended to fund peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and military operations in Iraq and Kosovo with unrelated Pentagon spending.

Each year as part of their review of the Administration's proposed Pentagon budget, Congress asks the services to identify "unfunded priorities," things the military thinks it needs that year but simply can not fund. These annual "wish lists" have become increasingly lengthy, and this year, for the first time were actually made public before the release of the Administration's official budget request.

Earlier this year it became clear that the JCS would seek substantial increases in military spending under the next administration. Their long term budget requests, delivered to Defense Secretary William Cohen in June, called for additional spending of as much as $30 billion annually for most of the next decade. By definition these documents, known as Program Objective Memoranda (POMs), are intended to reflect spending levels set for the services by the Administration. However, statements by representatives of the JCS indicate that while recent increases in military spending have been well received by the Service Chiefs, the POMs reflect their belief that significantly greater resources need to be made available in the immediate future.

The decision by the JCS to disregard the funding levels set by the Pentagon's civilian leadership in preparing the POM reflects a continuation of the recent trend by the nation's military — with the help of Congress — to circumvent normal budgetary procedures.

For Additional Information:

CDI U.S. Military Spending Home Page.

E-Mail Senior Analyst Christopher Hellman.

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