Congress Earmarks Defense Budget for Padding

(MoneyWatch)  The defense budget of the United States will be over $700 billion in 2011. The budget is basically divided into three parts. First, there is personnel--pay and benefits for soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen along with their dependents and retirees. Second, there is funding to operate military equipment including that necessary for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The final part goes to new equipment and to develop better and more effective gear.

In a sense, though, there is a fourth part to the budget: Congressional goodies.

Members of Congress have the power to add earmarks to budgets--that is, granting more money to a project than requested or funding a new one. It is called an "earmark" as it is normally targeted for a single company or a specific task. Earmarks have slowly been growing along with the size of the budget overall despite efforts by the Executive Branch and outside groups like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to end the practice.

One criticism is that it is easy for earmarks to flow to companies that provide campaign donations to politicians. Another is that they are often unwanted and unneeded by the military. For the last few years, the Air Force has not requested any more Boeing (BA) C-17 transports claiming that the required number has been built. Congress has added funds for more to be built.

The Services can, in a way, request their own earmarks, through the Unfunded Requirements List. For the 2011 budget, these total $1.8 billion. The list tells Congress of things the Navy, Air Force and Army want that did not make it through the various reviews by the Defense Department and White House. The UFR's are things that the Services believe they need but that the overall Defense Department leadership don't rate as priorities in their final budget.

In a more perfect union, the money added to or moved around in the Defense budget by Congress would be used to fund the priorities of the Services rather than going to pet hometown projects to coax re-election.

Don't hold your breath.