The U.S. military would be blocked from spending money on sports teams and sponsorships under an amendment the House Appropriations Committee added today by voice vote to the draft fiscal 2013 Defense appropriations bill. The Defense Department will spend $80 million this year to sponsor NASCAR teams, Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, and Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, said in a joint statement.
That includes the U.S. Army-branded #39 car driven by Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s #88 Chevrolet, of which the National Guard is a leading sponsor. The military spent $1 billion over the last 10 years on sports sponsorship deals, according to McCollum and Kingston, including with NASCAR, professional bass fishing and ultimate fighting.
“The government borrows forty cents for every dollar it spends and this is where we’re spending it?” Kingston said in the statement. “In the face of deep cuts and troop force reductions, the military should not be spending nearly $100 million sponsoring professional sports.”
The U.S. Army uses sponsorships like Newman’s car “to compete for the attention of young men and women who might be interested in enlisting,” George Wright, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said in a phone interview. The sponsorships are targeted to reach potential enlistees and what advertisers call their ‘influencers’ — parents, teachers, coaches and the like.
Previous attempts to ban military spending on NASCAR have run into resistance. McCollum offered an amendment in February 2011 to ban military sponsorships of motorsports. The House rejected it 148-281.
