"The Pentagon is facing a six-month deadline to spend its largest budget in years — a crunch that has some lawmakers fretting about a wasteful year-end bonanza,” Politico’s Sarah Ferris and Connor O’Brien report.
The budget Congress approved this month provides and extra $80 billion for the military. “But that windfall, and the Oct. 1. deadline to spend much of it, is raising concerns that the Pentagon will be racing to spend it."
Politico’s Connor O’Brien also reports that, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, “defense leaders on Capitol Hill are filling their campaign accounts with a big boost from the defense industry. And so far, House appropriators have been the biggest winners.
"In all, members of the influential House spending panel make up four of the top five recipients of defense cash, according to a POLITICO analysis of defense filings with the FEC. And it comes as appropriators jockey for the committee's top spot and as the House and Senate spending panels craft omnibus spending legislation to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year."
