Congress had long allowed military exercises to bypass construction oversight
Evidence
In the budget for fiscal year 2015, Congress took several critical steps to assert much-needed control over the MilCon process and Pentagon spending. Most important of all, Congress is attempting to prevent the military from building overseas without proper oversight. “None of the funds,” reads the year’s MilCon spending bill, “may be used to initiate a new installation overseas without prior notification to the Committees on Appropriations of both Houses of Congress.” Another provision of the law requires the Pentagon to alert Congress to any MilCon of more than $100,000 planned for military exercises, which has long been a way to build without congressional approval. To prevent military officials from wastefully spending MilCon money at the end of the fiscal year, Congress also prohibited the use of more than 20 percent of funding in the fiscal year’s last two months. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1076
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
Related
- The 2015 military construction bill curtailed unapproved overseas building. (similarity 0.95)
- Pentagon military construction spending routinely disregards costs and law with little Congressional oversight (similarity 0.82)
- The Pentagon circumvented Congress by building Honduran bases under exercise cover. (similarity 0.81)
- The Pentagon evaded Congress by building bases under exercise cover (similarity 0.81)
- U.S. military construction spending in 2014 exceeded the budgets of several major federal agencies. (similarity 0.81)
- Military construction spending is so profligate it is out of control (similarity 0.80)
- Global military construction spending in 2014 exceeded several entire civilian agencies’ budgets (similarity 0.80)
- Overseas military construction routinely receives misleading justifications to secure funding. (similarity 0.79)
- The Pentagon routinely spends billions on construction with flawed cost analysis and minimal oversight (similarity 0.78)