Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) asked “Jeopardy”-style questions to officials from the Department of Defense (DoD) during a hearing centered around financial accountability.
During the joint meeting held by the National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs and the Government Operations and the Federal Workforce subcommittees, Porter held up a sign titled, “JeopardDoD!” explaining that she would be asking questions related to categories like waste, missing guardrails and people who were responsible for blowing up the defense budget.
Porter’s game was styled after the popular television game show, “Jeopardy” in which contestants pick a category and a number amount. The host then asks them a question to which the contestants then give the answer in the form of a question.
President Joe Biden released his budget plan for the 2024 fiscal year, which called for an increase in the DoD’s discretionary budget to $842 billion, a 3.2% rise from the following year.
“In Washington, the same game is played year after year,” Porter began. She continued: “The president requests a massive defense budget, lawmakers don’t want to be seen as soft on national security, and defense lobbyists exploit that. Congress then falls into line and passes an expensive defense package, and then we do the same thing again the next year. That’s the game that lawmakers and lobbyists play with our tax dollars.”
I’m a fan of Jeopardy so I thought this was a pretty interesting way to make your point in a hearing on financial accountability in the DOD pic.twitter.com/MbKQaRxMRb
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 13, 2023
Porter shared with the DoD officials and her colleagues that they would be playing “a new game.”
“You’ll pick a category and a point amount. I’ll read you a prompt and just like in regular ‘Jeopardy’ you’ll give the answer in the form of the question,” said Porter, giving the DoD officials instructions similar to the “Jeopardy.”
The game began with John Tenaglia, the Principal Director of defense pricing and contracting with the DoD picking the 100-points from the “Enablers” category.
Porter began reading the question, “A president who called how much we spend on defense crazy but let defense spending grow by over 100 billion in one term,” referring to former President Donald Trump.
In December 2018, Trump remarked that the U.S. defense budget was “crazy,” months after he agreed to increase the budget to $700 billion, a $108 billion increase. Trump also increased the budget for the fiscal year of 2019 to $716 billion.
Tenaglia admitted to Porter that he had not known the answer to the question before she revealed Trump’s name from the category.
“The winner today should be the American people,” said Porter at the end of the game. “Because no matter who uncovers the most waste, the important thing is that we provide long overdue oversight to the taxpayers.”
Biden’s 2024 fiscal year budget is an “increase of $26 billion” from the 2023 fiscal year budget and an increase of $100 billion from the 2022 fiscal year, according to a press release from the DoD.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the DoD’s budget “seeks to meet” critical challenges the United States faces from China and would help to “sustain” its “military advantage over China,” according to the press release.
