U.S. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) on April 26 sponsored a bipartisan bill that would require an independent study and report on the effect of pass-through budgeting on organizations and elements of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
The Defense Budget Transparency Act of 2022, H.R. 7574, which is cosponsored by U.S. Rep. Kaialiʻi Kahele (D-HI), aims to improve public understanding of how tax dollars are being allocated in the U.S. defense budget, according to a bill summary provided by Rep. Bacon’s staff.
“Now more than ever it is imperative that Americans and their elected representatives know how our defense dollars are being spent,” Rep. Bacon said. “This legislation would establish a minimum level of transparency in how defense resources are allocated between the military services and the Pentagon’s fourth estate.”
If enacted, H.R. 7574 would direct the DOD Secretary to prepare the report on the extent and impacts of pass-through budgeting and would require future defense budgets to clearly identify when dollars are allocated to a branch of the Armed Forces that do not fall under the control of the service to which they are allocated, according to the bill summary.
For example, pass-through budgeting for many years has accounted for a growing portion of the published U.S. Department of the Air Force budget. For fiscal year 2023, $40 billion (17 percent) of the Pentagon’s total request for the department does not actually go to the Air Force, but instead “passes through” to fund other government agencies, the summary says.
Consequently, this practice distorts public understanding of how funding is distributed between the Departments of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and other defense-wide accounts, and artificially inflates the published budget for the Department of the Air Force, according to Rep. Bacon’s staff.
“Once again, the Pentagon’s official budget request fails to reflect the true Air Force budget,” said Rep. Bacon. “On paper, the general public and most members of Congress would be surprised to learn that the actual budget request for the Air Force is $40 billion less than the Pentagon says it is, while defense-wide costs are actually $40 billion higher than reported.”
Reps. Bacon and Kahele, who serve on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, plan to incorporate H.R. 7574 into the FY 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.