National defense is expensive, but more money doesn’t necessarily mean greater security. Unfortunately, more money seems to be the only way Congress knows how to show it cares. Once again, it is pushing through another record-large annual defense budget with no real scrutiny of how funds are spent and whether they match our security needs.
The House recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), providing $858 billion for next year’s defense budget and putting it on a path to passage before the end of the year.
The NDAA is widely considered the most important “must pass” bill each year, and Congress has successfully passed it for more than 60 years in a row. This is why it is often a target for contentious issues that lawmakers want to force through (like rescinding the COVID vaccine mandate for service members), but not for significant public debate and scrutiny.
But debate and scrutiny are exactly what our defense budget needs most. This year’s budget is about 12% ($90 billion) more than last year’s budget and $45 billion more than the Biden administration requested.
The numbers only tell part of the story. The Pentagon has the biggest budget in the federal government by a long shot, but it also has the worst record of stewarding those funds. Only a few weeks before the NDAA hit the House floor for a vote, the Defense Department announced that it had failed to pass its annual audit for the fifth year in a row. This year’s audit was only able to balance the books for approximately 39% of its $3.5 trillion in assets.
The Pentagon’s first ever attempt at an independent financial audit came only in 2017, and it hasn’t been able to account for its entire complement of assets and liabilities in any year since. It is the only government department that has not fulfilled legally mandated annual audit requirements that have been on the books since the 1990s.
This led Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to introduce the Audit the Pentagon Act last year, which would require any component of the Defense Department that fails its audit to forfeit 1% of its budget. The bill stalled in committee though, in another sign that Congress doesn’t care to hold the Pentagon to account.
To be fair, the Defense Department is a behemoth, with assets in every state in America and more than 40 countries. It operates a health care system providing benefits for nearly 10 million personnel, retirees and families. The work of the Defense Department — deterring threats and ensuring our nation’s security — is fundamental for every American.
But these are all reasons to take more care, not less, with budget oversight. And yet the NDAA each year is a clear indication that budget oversight and justification is not a priority when it comes to funding the Pentagon.
Some provisions in the new budget reflect top national security priorities. The biggest budget items focus on increasing conventional and nuclear capabilities, specifically those that might be relevant in a war with China. With growing concerns about U.S. weapons stockpiles given the generous provision of military assistance to Ukraine, the NDAA allocates almost three billion dollars to increase munitions production. Other provisions significantly increase funding for support to Taiwan, up to $10 billion over five years for weapons and training, reflecting intensifying concern about China’s ability to coerce Taiwan.
But inertia has also played a big role, with Congress choosing to stay the course on partnerships and programs that have long failed to deliver. It’s not just about saving U.S. taxpayer dollars either. Some of these expenditures work against our national security interest.
An amendment to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia was dropped, despite increasing calls to reassess whether our partnership with the kingdom helps or hurts U.S. interests. Efforts to increase oversight and accountability for U.S. security cooperation programs were also left out. This is confounding given the poor track record of security sector assistance. In Africa, where train-and-assist programs with host-government militaries form the backbone of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, terrorist violence has actually increased by 300% over the past decade. Rather than take a skeptical approach to ongoing partnership programs with mixed results at best, the NDAA increases support for partner capacity building by nearly $200 million.
Even where the administration aimed to cut back on needless spending, Congress found opportunities to overrule. For example, Congress prevented the military from decommissioning 12 ships the Navy had deemed unnecessary and increased the number of new battle force ships that the Navy will purchase from the eight requested to 11. These decisions are typically driven by interests of local congressional constituencies that benefit from the military industrial complex rather than U.S. national security needs determined by the Defense Department.
The NDAA is an annual opportunity to take a closer look at how the United States uses its military in the interest of U.S. national security. As the world gets more dangerous and global challenges more complex, more scrutiny would serve the American people far better than endless bipartisan generosity.
Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior fellow on U.S. foreign policy with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”
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