Last month, the Obama administration released its 2017 budget proposal, including thousands of pages on the nearly $600 billion request for the Pentagon. That money is earmarked for a wide array of projects—$1.8 billion in procurement of equipment for the Special Operations Command, for instance, and $1.2 billion for the chemical and biological weapons defense program. In each case, the administration carefully explains the rationale and purpose for the budget request.

But what isn't included in that massive budget is a comprehensive country-level breakdown of the $10 billion or so in foreign military aid the Pentagon administers every year, euphemistically referred to as Building Partner Capacity. This makes it impossible to calculate the cost of individual aid programs, much less to determine whether the BPC programs are effective. That's a concern, because BPC sometimes causes more problems than it solves.

On Wednesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing to examine these programs. This oversight is overdue. Congress needs to do a better job of holding the Pentagon publicly accountable for how it administers BPC programs—before they inadvertently cause more damage to U.S. interests around the globe.