On the Friday before Labor Day, the Office of Management and Budget dropped a “Summary of Funding Request to Meet Critical Needs”. This scant, six page, document was embedded in a blog post on the need for a Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government running at the beginning of the next fiscal year.

It’s almost like they didn’t want us to notice…

There are four major tranches of funding in this $47.1 billion request: aid for Ukraine ($13.7 billion), COVID-19 response ($22.4 billion), Monkeypox response ($4.5 billion), and funding in response to natural disasters ($6.5 billion).

So, $47.5 billion with six pages of “details” averages $7.9 billion per page. Nice spending rate if you can get it out of the Congress.

On Ukraine aid, a review of the paltry justification document isn’t much of a bone for a budget watchdog to chew on. The money is broken down into three categories:

• The Pentagon would receive $7.2 billion
  • $4.5 billion for equipment for Ukraine and replenishment of DoD stocks already sent to that country.
  • $2.7 billion for “continued military, intelligence, and other defense support”.
• The State Department and the Agency for International Development would receive $4.5 billion for “direct budget support to Ukraine to support the continuity of government.”
• The Department of Energy would receive $2 billion
  • $1.5 billion for uranium to fuel U.S. nuclear reactors as a hedge against a decrease in Russian supplies.
  • $500 million for “modernizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce domestic energy costs and ensure sustainable access to energy resources”.

That first bullet, roughly outlining the Pentagon tranche of potential spending, got us wondering how much of the previous Ukraine Supplemental has been obligated. In other words, has the many billions of dollars already promised to Ukraine actually been spent? Hard to say, budget watchdog fans. The place to find those budget execution answers on the Pentagon website is silent on the topic.

Congress will be looking for answers to these questions as well as far more details. As Senator John Tester (D-MT) Chairman of the Defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee said, “I’m not opposed to it; I just want to know what’s in it.”

And that brings us to a point we’ve been making all year long…when the government is shoveling billions of your tax dollars out the door, oversight is key.