Missed opportunities on DOD Reform

The last few weeks in Washington have been centered on a flurry of major news stories and events. The election of new House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the continuing Presidential debates for the 2016 nomination, a major budget deal, and now the Paris attack that killed more than 100 people last Friday night. Lost in the constant cycle of continuing coverage of these other things is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was passed (again) by both the House and Senate that is now awaiting President Obama’s signature before becoming law.

The very little attention that was paid to the NDAA’s journey through Congress was mainly focused on the first time it passed when President Obama promptly vetoed it. Year after year President Obama has made veto threats but this was the first time that he actually made good on the threat. The reasoning behind the rare White House veto was detailed through a statement from the administration at the time of the signing on October 22:

Unfortunately, it falls woefully short in three areas.  Number one, it keeps in place the sequester that is inadequate for us to properly fund our military in a stable, sustained way and allows all of our armed forces to plan properly…

Number two, unfortunately it prevents a wide range of reforms that are necessary for us to get our military modernized and able to deal with the many threats that are presenting themselves in the 21st century…

And the third thing is that this legislation specifically impeded our ability to close Guantanamo in a way that I have repeatedly argued is counterproductive to our efforts to defeat terrorism around the world…

The $607 billion defense authorization bill (S. 1356) was then sent back to Congress where changes were made in the hopes of avoiding another veto and breaking the streak of more than 50 years of the NDAA being approved. In the last two weeks, the amended legislation passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly by votes of 91-3 and 370-58. The Hill noted the revisions made in order to get past another potential Presidential veto:

Obama vetoed the original bill largely because of concerns about an extra $38 billion in war funding. A two-year budget deal passed late last month resolved that policy fight by increasing both defense and nondefense spending.

The new version cut $5 billion from the original bill to match the budget deal, including $250 million to the administration’s Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund and more than $1 billion in fuel savings.

The good news was that the new NDAA made some limited cuts, but the bad news is the budget deal that passed broke the sequester caps on defense spending (and non-defense as well). The new bill is all but likely to be signed by the President this week and unfortunately there were major missed opportunities for taxpayers.

First, the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account continues to be a major problem for those who want more efficiency, better transparency, and accurate accounting of the spending by the Department of Defense (DOD). The FY 2016 NDAA includes $50.9 billion for the OCO slush fund.  There is no need to use OCO as a means to circumvent base budgeting but unfortunately that is what has been taking place for several years now. Congress needs to live within the spending caps they put into law (with the President’s approval) and find ways to cut spending rather than use budgetary gimmicks to sneak past those very caps.

Another critical missed opportunity in the latest NDAA is the continued lack of transparency and accountability. The Senate continues to conduct business on putting together the legislation behind closed doors. TPA has continued to call for an “Open NDAA” in both chambers, and though the House has taken steps toward shining more light on the process, the Senate continues to drop the ball. Accountability is still a problem because there is still no hope that there will be an extensive and accurate audit of the Pentagon. In 1997, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) required the Pentagon to start submitting a full audit, it’s been nearly twenty years and not a single complete audit for the agency has been handed over. This is unacceptable from an agency that has been spending trillions of dollars over the last few decades.

And, even though Congress claims to have eliminated earmarks, TPA found $13 billion worth of earmarks in last year’s Defense appropriations bill.

In the last fifteen years, over the course both Republican and Democrat presidencies, the Pentagon’s budget has risen more than 40 percent. Even though the world has seen major changes and increased threats to security that doesn’t excuse the billions in waste that has been exposed by Inspectors Generals, Congress, and outside watchdog groups like TPA. Taxpayers deserve to feel safe and be protected, but what they don’t deserve is a government that wastes their money on things that neither keep us safe nor benefit our security here and abroad.