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.
New bollard-style US-Mexico border fencing is seen in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, US, March 5, 2019. Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
The Pentagon is following the direction of the White House, which announced that it would use Section 284 Pentagon counterdrug authority to fund portions of the wall before it begins to pilfer military construction projects under Section 2808 and the emergency declaration. Because the Section 284 counterdrug account is currently almost empty, the White House directed the Pentagon to find money elsewhere in the military budget to fill the account.
Secretary Shanahan found this money and redirected it using "reprogramming authority," a process that affords the Pentagon crucial financial flexibility in a fast-paced threat environment. Under this process, the military sends reprogramming requests to Capitol Hill stating why it needs to move funds from unexpectedly lower-priority programs to unexpectedly higher-priority programs. For instance, last year, the Pentagon redirected $18 million from programs with testing delays to buy spare parts for Marine Corps RQ-21 Blackjack drones because they'd been used more frequently than expected in Iraq and Syria. Reprogramming requests normally redirect less than one percent of defense funding in any one given year, but they are the military's primary tool to adjust to changing threats and circumstances. By longstanding bipartisan custom, all reprogramming requests above a minuscule threshold require approval from the chairmen and ranking members of the Appropriations and Armed S ervices committees in both the House and the Senate — eight total members of Congress. Any one member can nix a request. But for the first time ever, the Pentagon will reprogram this $1 billion without asking Congress for sign-off.
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 unce rtainty 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."< /p>
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.
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