A Texas congresswoman has proposed a $28.6 billion fund for the Pentagon that could be used at the discretion of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to give the military the ability to rebuild forces.
The fund, proposed by Republican Rep. Kay Granger, is already part of the House-passed 2018 defense spending bill and would allow Mattis to spend on more troops, equipment and war operations as he sees fit, following approval of any expenditures by the House Appropriations Committee, where Granger chairs the defense subcommittee. The fund is part of the overall $658 billion House defense appropriations bill.
“We wanted to have flexibility because there are so many things that come up that we don’t know so we let it be that flexible but we also put very strong oversight,” Granger said on Wednesday at the Defense News Conference.
Congress holds the military purse strings and typically determines where and when money is spent in its annual defense budgets. But Granger’s National Defense Restoration Fund would give the Pentagon much more autonomy on spending and drew some criticism that it is a slush fund.
The rules requiring committee approval of Pentagon expenditures were written by the top Democrat on the House’s defense appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Pete Visclosky of Indiana, according to Granger.
“That pot of money, [the Pentagon] can come and say ‘I want this much of that for this project’ and we as a committee can vote on that and approve it,” she said.
The House passed the fund in July as part of a security “minibus” of four annual appropriations bills, including defense.
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the House Appropriations Committee ranking member, criticized the fund in June, saying it should not be included in the defense spending bill.
“There are seven National Defense Restoration Funds totaling $28.6 billion in what amounts to slush funds for a department that would receive $28 billion more than it requested,” Lowey said in a released statement.
