I would assume this happens at the fed level all the time. I had a friend say the same. Told buy his boss to order more stuff or their budget will be lowered. This is the mentality that is wasting tax dollars.
I've worked in a number of military/DoD facilities in my career, and yes, the baseline budgeting process is super wasteful.
The people in charge of submitting a budget for their programs never ask for less than the previous year's budget -- even if they didn't spend all of last year's funds. In fact, they take last year's number and add a percentage increase to account for increases in prices/inflation the following year.
All year long you'll hear the managers tell you they can't buy this piece of equipment or pay for that trip for a conference or training because there's no money in the budget. Didn't matter how important or beneficial that expenditure would be. They just couldn't find the money in the budget.
Fast forward to July and August that same fiscal year ending in October, and the organization suddenly has "excess funds" that need to be spent rather than returned. They wind up buying furniture, electronics, expensive tool kits, software suites, books, $5,000 workstations, and whatever else they can justify. All that money to be spent, yet there was none available for things we needed throughout the year.
I once went TDY with a large group to Florida. We were there for several weeks. The unit only budgeted for two rental cars, and once we were split up into shifts, the Captain in charge returned one of them to save money. So, when one group was working, the group not on shift had to share the one car to get things done. Invariably, there would be someone to take the car as soon as they could and go sightseeing or whatever while the rest of us had no transportation to run to the BX or commissary, run errands, etc.
After the Major from our unit showed up a few days before we left, I mentioned how another vehicle would have reduced the stress. He said, "All Captain Smith needed to do was call, and I would have authorized it." Too late. Shows how the higher-ups divide up the funds and can shift money between priorities, but the lower managers only spend what they are told is in their budget.
Anyway, I learned long before that trip that if you really need money from the unit's funding, you can ALWAYS find it. Someone in the chain is keeping the funds flowing as slowly as possible to avoid being broke 6 months into the FY. Too bad few are adept at actually planning a 12-month budget.