I am your constituent and I am urging you to vote to end the statutorily required “Unfunded Priorities List” (UPL) from the Department of Defense, and to reject increased spending included in this year’s list.
Defense military contractors have a long history of price-gouging. Management of Pentagon expenditures is so bad that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has had the DoD on its high-risk list for financial mismanagement since 1990.
The billions of dollars spent on UPLs do not make us safer, and former and current Defense Secretaries (Secretaries Gates and Austin) have opposed them. What will make us safer is to instead invest those billions of dollars in programs such as Head Start, SNAP, Medicaid, clean energy, and housing programs.
Every dollar that goes to wasteful defense spending is a dollar that is not going to critical programs to assist people and families -- many of which are chronically underfunded.
Please, rein in wasteful Pentagon spending and end the DoD’s required Unfunded Priorities List. The Streamline Pentagon Spending Act (H.R.4740/S.5255 in the last Congress) is a bipartisan bill that would repeal the annual mandate for these wish lists. This bill is a crucial step toward accountability, transparency, and peace and I urge you to support this legislation. And, I strongly urge you to support any amendments to defense legislation to end the UPLs and reject funding from the current list as you’re negotiating the FY2025 budget.
