The House Appropriations Committee recently acted on the spending bill to fund, among other things, U.S. military construction (MILCON) projects on bases around the world in Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23).

First things first, the good news is that House lawmakers recognized the need for greater emphasis on the Energy Resilience and Conservation Investment Program (ERCIP) for U.S. military bases. The Pentagon is a huge consumer of fossil fuels. There are multiple ways the military services can be part of the solution to the problem of climate change. TCS President, Steve Ellis, recently wrote about the role government contracting can play.

House lawmakers looked at the FY23 ERCIP MILCON request from the Biden Administration, clocking in at just over $751 million, and decided to do more. The Committee version of the bill adds $175 million to bring that total up to more than $926 million. The increases are in the overall ERCIP category (+$100 million), Planning and Design, Defense-wide (+$25 million) and the creation of a new line item for the Indo-Pacific theater (+$50 million).

This is good news for everyone concerned about issues of climate change and the Pentagon’s role in helping to combat it.

Second things second, a table in the Committee Report identifies more than two dozen “Community Projects” that lawmakers sought to add to the President’s budget request. Together, these add up to $381.3 million in funds for projects tied to a particular base in a particular Member’s district. And, of that total, almost half ($176.6 million) is just for bases in Florida. Now, on the one hand, Florida has a lot of military bases. But…this has to give all the other state delegations a bit of a complex about their relative political power. So, we created our own table to show the relative power of the five states that received about two-thirds of the money that was added to the military construction portion of the bill.

The top five states to receive military construction “Community Projects” are:

Of the overall 28 disclosed, 13 were requested by six different members of the House Appropriations Committee. Proving, as we always say, it’s good to be an Appropriator. Those 13 projects account for $87.3 million of the overall $381.3 million in these backdoor earmarks.

We’ll take our wins where we can find them. This bill includes almost a billion dollars to respond to the effects of climate change on military bases around the world. Plus, disclosing these so-called “Community Projects” is a step forward in transparency. And all of it gives budget watchdogs like us the chance to parse the numbers, look for patterns, and tell you all about it.

Remember, it’s good to be an Appropriator! Follow us for more budget nerd life hacks.