Congress said to steer military funds to pet projects

WASHINGTON -- Congress, taking advantage of wartime support of national defense spending, is using the military's budget to steer billions to pet projects that apparently have little to do with Iraq or the ongoing war on terrorism, according to congressional documents, government budget officials, and watchdog groups.

The projects range from an unneeded warship and a seriously flawed cargo plane the Pentagon tried to cancel to millions each for a Mississippi wastewater treatment plant, a Nevada fire training station, and a Texas research hospital, the documents show.

The House of Representatives opened debate yesterday on a $409 billion defense appropriations bill for next year that includes at least $12 billion for weapons and research programs the Pentagon did not ask for and what critics label ''pork," according to the congressional reports and initial estimates by budget specialists. The projects were added by influential House members, who propose paying for many of them by cutting the budget for more urgent defense programs such as military training.

The extras have led the White House and budget hawks to assert that legislators could add billions more to a bloated federal budget and further hamper the military's ability to fulfill its mission. In a letter sent yesterday, the White House Office of Management and Budget earmarked $3.6 billion in the House bill that was shifted from the Pentagon's operations and maintenance accounts that would be used to pay for the added programs.

''The administration is concerned that these reductions could damage the readiness of US forces and their preparedness," the OMB wrote to Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, and Representative David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, the chairman and ranking members of the Appropriations Committee.

The OMB letter said that the $285 million that would be slashed from a Pentagon program designed to fill some military desk jobs with civilians ''would limit one of [the Defense Department's] most productive initiatives for reducing the strain on our armed forces [and to] free up critically needed troops for the Global War on Terror."

The letter said ''the committee's additions to the Navy's shipbuilding budget . . . and numerous other smaller funding increases, preempts the Department's ability to invest cost-effectively in 21st-century capabilities."

Lawmakers have increasingly used the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as cover to saddle the Pentagon's budget with ''add-ons" -- projects that benefit legislators' home districts but are not necessarily related to the military, according to a review of budget documents and interviews with budget specialists.

''The addition of pork to the bill has accelerated as people get more supportive of defense because of the war," said Winslow Wheeler, a former aide to the Senate Budget Committee chairman, Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico. Wheeler, a high-profile critic of congressional spending practices since leaving Congress in 2003 after 30 years, believes that ''pork is growing just about more than anything else." The price tags range to several hundred million dollars.

The fiscal year 2006 Defense Appropriations Bill adds nearly $900 million to build a destroyer that the Navy did not request, but would secure jobs at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi. It adds $75 million to buy four new helicopters from Sikorsky Aircraft in Connecticut, even though the Army did not ask for them.

The appropriations bill provides seed money to buy dozens of C-130J transport planes built by Lockheed Martin in Georgia in the coming years -- even though the Pentagon wanted to stop delivery on the planes after reports of critical design and engineering problems. The National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa., would stay open and get more money even though the Pentagon wanted to close it.

It is often unclear in the bill which legislator is responsible for which add-on, but some, such as Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, have touted their work to constituents back home. Murtha added the money for the drug center.

There are 20 pages' worth of smaller, sometimes vaguely-described projects that appear to have less to do with the war on terrorism: $5 million to study mood disorders; $2.7 million to research a cancer vaccine; $4 million to find new ways to diagnose heart attacks; $4 million for something called the ''diabetes regeneration project." None of them were included in the Pentagon's initial $363.7 billion spending request.

Steve Kosiak, a defense budget specialist at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said that some of the add-on expenses make military sense, but ''it is hard to figure out what is pork and what is legitimate" because details are hard to come by; only about 10 percent of the add-ons to the appropriations bill are clear enough to identify as pork without extensive research.

A study by Taxpayers for Common Sense recently identified more than $12 billion in add-ons last year and expects the number to be higher this year.

Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscally conservative watchdog group, said Congress is showing ''a trend to dictate to the military services where and when they should be spending more and more of their money" in part to further their parochial interests. And he said legislators are showing little restraint: ''They are giving all the pet items to everybody. The numbers have skyrocketed."

Ashdown said his analyis found that the ''parochially and politically motivated earmarks" totaled 2,671 last year, compared to just 62 in 1980. The analysis also showed that 65 percent of the add-ons were inserted by members of key committees.

The rise is partly blamed on the practice since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through separate ''emergency" spending bills so the money is not tallied in the overall federal budget. These bills have provided another opportunity to direct defense dollars to lawmakers' states or districts while also freeing room in the regular defense bill for more favored programs, according to specialists.

The $80 billion war bill passed earlier this year was riddled with add-ons, according to several analyses. It included $10 million to expand wastewater facilities in Swiftwater, Pa. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center got $3 million. A wastewater treatment plant in Desoto County, Miss., got $35 million, and $4 million went to the Fire Sciences Academy in Elk, Nev.

To reduce the need to draft special funding bills, the appropriations bill being debated in the House adds $45 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the first six months of 2006.

But Chris Hellman, a military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said much of that money will replenish the Pentagon progams that were cut to pay for the pet projects. ''They rob Peter to pay Paul and rob someone else to pay Peter," he said.

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.