Congressional Democrats enabled Pentagon to divert COVID funding to defense contractors, a breakdown

Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°46 | 24 September 2020

Situation

Congress gave DOD ~$10 billion for COVID-related expenses (on top of its existing budget). DOD proceeded to spend ~$1 billion of that on military equipment. Congressional Democrats are upset, calling for an investigation to ascertain the legality of DOD’s diversion (“reprogramming”) of public funds:

^Source

Congressional Democrats let this happen

Congress tells DOD what to do with the money it appropriates, but DOD still moves money around all the time. Since this irritates congressional appropriators, Congress often imposes limits on DOD’s “transfer authority.” For FY2020, Congress capped it at $4bn (why not less?), which explains why DOD reprogrammed only $3.8 billion for Trump’s border wall instead of like $10 billion or whatever.

So what’s going on with this whole thing comes down to DOD’s “transfer authority” or the extent to which DOD can reprogram public funds obligated for one thing to do another. DOD thinks it should be able to do this basically anytime it wants, so it’s incumbent on Congress to prevent this sort of parochial takeover of public funds.

There’s two basic things Congress could have done to prevent this instance (and others) of DOD reprogramming from happening:

1. Congress could have written the bill better

Section 13001 of the CARES Act (Public Law 116-136) authorizes DOD to use the $10.5 billion it received via Title III of the CARES Act to use for the COVID-19 response. 

Congress could have included a prohibition on using COVID relief funds on weapons/military equipment alongside its existing provision that prevents DOD from transferring relief funds to the Army Corps of Engineers for the purposes of building Trump’s border wall (by way of the exception in the bill text, below). They did not.

^Source

2. Congress could have not given DOD relief funding in the first place

Of course this was going to happen. We knew in June that DOD planned to spend the COVID-relief money on non-COVID stuff. Of the $10.5 billion, DOD said it would obligate one-third ($3.2 billion) for reallocation, according to a copy of the department’s CARES Act spending plan (May 2020, published by the Washington Post early in the next month).

An excerpt from the spending plan, which conveys DOD’s respective interest w/r/t public health vs. corporate welfare for defense contractors:

^Source

Conclusion

To recap: congressional Democrats are acting as if they’re surprised that DOD diverted COVID relief to defense contractors despite writing the bill that effectively allowed it and after DOD said it would do it.

Thanks for your time,

Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)

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