Defense Earmarks Help Vital Programs

In a recent edition of Defense News, Matthew Kambrod, a former research, development and acquisition official in the Army, make an effective case for why defense earmarks are essential to making US service members safer and more effective:

“Contrary to general belief, earmarks for defense are an essential part of the appropriations process. They are a direct result of the Office of Management and Budget's allocation of insufficient funding to the Department of Defense at the start of each budget year.

“Earmarks show up in the annual defense bill following a fully transparent process to identify service programs for funding. The services confirm these unfunded requirements as essential to members of Congress in whose districts work would be done. They are confirmed again when vetted by professional staff members of the committees in each chamber of Congress responsible for defense appropriations.

“These earmarks are then placed on members' Web sites for public scrutiny even before inclusion in committee reports.

“Unlike the self-aggrandizing rhetoric from those making careers of damning the entire earmark process for the handful of programs that might slip through the system as an aberration, earmarks for defense, particularly in time of war, provide the funding for most of the research-and-development work essential to improving the weapons our soldiers use on the battlefield. These are the very combat capabilities that make our service members safer and more effective in fighting the wars to which we commit them.

“Little known, too, is the fact that many of the earmarks are for research programs that create the medical miracles that bring our wounded soldiers home alive and rehabilitate them once back.

“Earmarks funded in 2010 to treat our severely wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan provided, for example, research into eye trauma and visual restoration; clinical trials of human skin substitutes to ease the pain of our 21- or 22-year-olds coming home as victims of massive burns; research into catastrophic bone injuries; treatment of battlefield spinal cord injuries; traumatic brain injury emergency care; solutions to post-traumatic stress disorders; and efficient prosthetic advances for our soldiers who have lost arms and legs. The list goes on.”