Analysis: Congress Reworks 10 Percent of DoD Procurement Budget | Defense News | defensenews.com: Congressional committees tweaked nearly 10 percent of the money that the Pentagon requested for its fiscal year 2015 appropriations accounts before the “cromnibus” spending bill was passed on Dec. 11 — resulting in $4.4 billion in additional procurement and research and development projects — an analysis of the budget shows.
Of the 812 budget lines for procurement appropriations — as tallied by VisualDoD — lawmakers added $6.9 billion to 60 programs while taking money away from 229 other programs, for a total cut of $2.9 billion.
Overall, that works out to a net $4 billion increase in funding over what the White House and Pentagon had originally asked for earlier in the year.
That money went into buying things both that the services didn’t ask for — but still clearly wanted — as well as things that they most definitely did not want, like $120 million more for Abrams tanks that the Army has said it has no use for, and $850 million to overhaul the aircraft carrier George Washington that the administration had planned to defer until the 2016 budget.
