Van Hollen, Alsobrooks Introduce Department of Defense’s Cost of War Act

U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks (Both D-Md.) introduced the Department of Defense's Cost of War Act (DoD COW), which if passed will require the costs for the renaming of the Department of Defense to be deducted from the Secretary of Defense's travel budget.

The cost of changing the name from Department of Defense to Department of War in all internal and external communications could rise to hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather than appropriating millions of more dollars and wasting Americans' taxpayer money, this bill would force the department to take the money from the Secretary's travel budget first and then from the travel budgets of the military service secretaries.

"We should not be wasting taxpayer dollars to stroke Donald Trump's ego and whims, but that's what this latest dictate by the Administration would do - with zero benefit to our national security. That's why our bill requires that this wasteful Trump Administration endeavor not come at the expense of America's military readiness," said Senator Van Hollen.

"Taxpayer dollars for our national defense cannot be wasted by this Administration on meaningless vanity projects," said Senator Alsobrooks. "Americans are relying on us to build our military and support our servicemembers against real threats around the world. If the Trump Administration wants to waste money on this name change, they should use the Secretary's travel budget to do it."