How the Plan to Launder Wall Funding Through the Pentagon Hurts the Military

On March 25, Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan notified Congress that he would redirect $1 billion in funding for military pay to build a 57-mile portion of the border wall. This laundering of border wall funding through the defense budget negatively impacts immediate military readiness. It could also result in Congress eliminating the very discretion the President is now using to the long-term detriment of the Pentagon and the military’s ability to manage its budget in a sound and prudent way.

The $1 billion of military pay being used is “unexpectedly lower-priority” because the Army failed to meet its recruiting target by about 9,500 soldiers, so the money originally budgeted isn’t needed to pay them. These sorts of hiccups occur every year: recruiting is slow, weapons programs experience testing or development delays, combat operations drop fewer bombs than expected. But this money does not go unused. Normally, the military would send a reprogramming request asking Congress to use the money to address emerging urgent needs. Failing that, the appropriations committees rescind money and use it on what they view as high-priority programs. A favorite of Congress — and what this $1 billion might likely have been spent on — is using unneeded funds to buy new equipment for National Guard and Reserve units they perceive as perennially underfunded by the Pentagon.

There’s plenty of high-profile immediate military needs this $1 billion of funding could meet. Just last week, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller sent a memo to Shanahan indicating that the Corps faces “fiscal challenges without precedent” and will have to cancel major training exercises to pay immediate bills for repairing Camp Lejeune’s hurricane damage and supporting border operations. In a normal year, the $1 billion in “unused” money would be quickly moved to pay unanticipated bills like those the Marine Corps faces. The Air Force faces similar bills for hurricane damage to Tyndall Air Force Base and flooding damage to Offutt Air Force Base. Beyond hurricane damage, the military just sent Congress a $10 billion list of high-priority unfunded projects that this $1 billion in “unused” military pay funding could be used for. The Pentagon’s reprogramming of at least $1 billion—and possibly another $1.5 billion—creates massive immediate financial uncertainty that detracts from the military’s ability to respond to emerging threats.

Those immediate effects pale in comparison to the long-term military consequences of this unprecedented unilateral reprogramming request. By breaking the longstanding agreement with Congress that enables this flexible authority, the White House risks the permanent loss of military reprogramming authority. Congress cannot prevent this current redirection of funds. But already, congressional Democrats have indicated their objection and intent to strip this authority from the Pentagon in the upcoming 2020 budget fight. From their perspective, allowing the Pentagon to continue reprogramming military funding for the border would amount to funding new portions of the wall beyond what they’ve approved, a policy issue undergirded by core questions about the power of the purse. This is no small matter, and many Republicans may end up agreeing. As Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed noted, “We’re setting up for a constitutional issue of significant importance.”

While the White House’s plan to use military construction funding to build the wall has garnered the most attention so far, this unprecedented unilateral reprogramming request could prove even more damaging to the military both immediately and in the long run. By simultaneously laundering wall money through the military and ignoring Congress in the process, the White House has placed the entire defense budget in jeopardy at a time when the military stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two years.

Rick Berger is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on the defense budget, the National Defense Authorization Act, military appropriations and acquisition reform, as well as on other national security budget-related issues. @bergerrichard

This article appeared originally at AEI.