At TCS we read the bills and we scour the funding tables to find things that others might miss. Among the budget abuses we note every year are the Pentagon programs that don’t make it into the $700+ billion budget request at all, but the Congress still funds. We call these programs out in our famous “Zero to Hero” charts after the House and Senate Appropriations Committees make their draft bills public.

As we checked the funding tables to see how many of those programs were funded in the final bill, we found something interesting…two programs that don’t seem to be in either the House or Senate bill, nor in the budget request, but are in the final bill. In the days of earmarking, these programs were called “air drops.” Where did they come from? No one could (or would) say. It was as if they simply dropped from the sky. In fact, during the fiscal year 2008-2010 earmark transparency era, “air dropped” earmarks were criticized by members of both parties and were set up for extra scrutiny.

One of these programs is a relatively minor $6,000,000 in Line 145 “Force Provider” in Other Procurement, Army. It’s for “Expeditionary Shelter Protection Systems.”

The second one is more substantial. This is in Procurement, Defense-wide and is line 32, “Ground Based Midcourse”. The line now includes $150 million for “GBI Boosters” that was in neither the House nor Senate drafts of the bill.

Things that make you go, “Hmmmmmm.”