‘Fund first, ask questions later’ is a bad way to go
Handing $156 billion to the Pentagon with no clear plan invites not just waste but danger. Here's why.
Gabe Murphy | July 31, 2025
Commentary Defense Budget Navy Space Force Congress Pentagon
Among the innovations of the new One Big Beautiful Bill Act is handing huge sums to the Pentagon without asking for justification in advance or offering clear direction for their expenditure. Some may tout this flexible approach as a boon to national security, but it is far more likely to produce the opposite: wasteful, deficit-fueled spending on abortive programs that ultimately hurt the military more than they help it. With House Speaker Mike Johnson already floating proposals for more reconciliation bills, it’s important to understand why.
Typically, the Pentagon’s spending is laid out in the annual Defense Appropriations Act, which allocates funds at the account level across the military’s various agencies. The funding tables that accompany the bill specify amounts for individual programs and sometimes even projects. The instructions in these tables aren’t technically binding, but the Pentagon traditionally follows them.
Last week, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, sent letters to the Pentagon and the Energy Department laying out how they’d like these agencies to spend the $156 billion for national security included in the recently enacted OBBBA. But the letters—and their funding tables for the Pentagon, military construction, and the National Nuclear Security Administration—look more like rough notes on congressional intent than a clear set of instructions.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/07/fund-first-ask-questions-later-bad-way-go/407139/?oref=d1-homepage-river
