Congress's "Emergency Funding" Is A Military Spending Giveaway

‘Emergency’ funding in the DOD spending bill is a dangerous gimmick.

By Gabe Murphy, Responsible Statecraft

As Congress zeroes in on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond the end of the 2024 fiscal year on September 30, it’s effectively punting on a host of questions lawmakers would rather not weigh in on ahead of the November 5 election.

Chief among them is whether or not to advance the Senate Appropriations Committee’s plan to include some $34.5 billion in emergency spending in the final budget, including $21 billion for the Pentagon and $13.5 billion for domestic programs.

On the Pentagon side of this “emergency” cash infusion, which led to the domestic emergency spending in a nominal nod to parity, a cursory look at some of the emergency increases shows that many are not in fact responding to real emergencies. Rather, as the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee Susan Collins (R-Maine) readily admitted in her description of the funding, the $21 billion “will be emergency funding so it will not break the (spending) caps” agreed to last year. Those caps limit spending to one percent above FY2024 levels.

In a recently updated database of congressional Pentagon budget increases, Taxpayers for Common Sense revealed that Senate appropriators proposed 47 emergency program increases for procurement and 16 emergency increases for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E), at a proposed cost to taxpayers of $9.1 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively.