Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, my bipartisan amendment would prevent funding from this bill to be used to require the Defense Department to create what is called an unfunded priorities list.

This list that DOD is required to send to Congress is simply a wish list of things that individual commanders and generals would like to fund. It has not gone through the level of prioritization and vetting that all of the other things that come in the budget do.

In preparing the White House budget request, the Commander in Chief, in consultation with top military brass, determines what is necessary to defend the country based on a holistic analysis of our national security needs. By definition, anything that is in an unfunded priorities list has already been determined to be extraneous by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This practice, that wasn't even mandatory until the passage of the FY17 NDAA, does not serve the national security interests of the United States or the interests of our taxpayers.

These wish lists are packed with billions of dollars of excessive line items, this year totaling more than $27.5 billion on top of the $850 billion requested by the White House and a 50 percent increase from last year.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bipartisan and commonsense amendment, and I thank my Republican colleagues, Congressmen McClintock and Davidson, as well as Congressman Garamendi who have joined me to rein in this wasteful spending that has no benefit to our national security.

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), my distinguished colleague and the ranking member.

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, I understand that it is critical for Congress to engage with the Pentagon to accurately meet our country's national security needs, but we don't have to spend billions of dollars on wish lists and what-ifs to accomplish that.

I say that the ranking member is absolutely right. If this is such a great idea for this agency, let's do it for all the agencies. If it is not a great idea for all the agencies, we shouldn't be doing it for the Department of Defense.

Let's be clear. If military leaders want more funding for their wish list, there is nothing in this amendment that would prevent DOD from supplying an unfunded priorities list to Congress, but this process should be optional, just as it was 8 years ago.

On top of that, most combatant commanders already testify before Congress ahead of the appropriations process so Congress can understand their needs without these wish lists that undercut the President's budget request.

By law, individual generals and commanders are required to go around the Commander in Chief and military leadership to Congress to ask for superfluous line items that serve mainly to line the pockets of defense contractors. This is corruption, plain and simple.

These lists get in the way of our military's stated priorities. For example, the House passed NDAA authorized funding for some of the Army's unfunded priorities while making substantial cuts to the requested amounts for the Army's three largest accounts.

This is despite Army Chief of Staff General Randy George specifically requesting that none of the Army's unfunded priorities displace anything on the Army's FY25 budget request.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this sensible, bipartisan amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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