CommunityEditor
05-29-2008, 09:30 PM
The Pentagon, still lacking more than $100 billion it has long requested to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, asked Congress on Tuesday for permission to transfer $9.7 billion to the Army and other agencies from the Navy and Air Force budgets as a stopgap measure.
If lawmakers do not take action on a new wartime supplemental spending request by June 9, the Pentagon said the Army, bearing the lion’s share of war burdens, will run out of money to pay its soldiers by June 15.
And even if the $9.7 billion reprogramming request is granted, the Pentagon said the money will fund only another few weeks of overall operations. Failure to pass the entire $108.1 billion supplemental request by mid-July, officials said, will exhaust all remaining military personnel and operations funding by late July and leave the department unable to meet both military and civilian payroll.
Service members and certain “essential” civilian personnel, including those serving in the war zones, would continue to serve without pay. Nonessential civilian employees would be laid off per applicable personnel rules, the Pentagon said.
One influential member of Congress, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, has said there is no threat to military paychecks and that the Pentagon’s stance is an unnecessary scare tactic.
Specifically, the Pentagon has asked for authority to transfer $5.7 billion from the military personnel accounts of the Navy and Air Force to the Army’s personnel accounts; and, separately, $4 billion from the Navy and Air Force operations and maintenance accounts and the Department of Defense Working Capital Fund, to the Army and U.S. Special Operations Command operations and maintenance accounts.
The personnel and O&M accounts, and the Working Capital Fund, were funded in the regular annual defense budget for fiscal 2008, which contained no money to pay for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the war funds had not been approved by late November, officials warned that, with only limited budget transfer authority, it would be forced to take draconian measures, including the layoffs of tens of thousands of civilian employees.
Congress subsequently approved a $70 billion “bridge” fund, forestalling the potential crisis.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now cost an average of $11.5 billion a month, according to the Pentagon.
Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/05/military_defensebudget_army_supplemental_052808w/
If lawmakers do not take action on a new wartime supplemental spending request by June 9, the Pentagon said the Army, bearing the lion’s share of war burdens, will run out of money to pay its soldiers by June 15.
And even if the $9.7 billion reprogramming request is granted, the Pentagon said the money will fund only another few weeks of overall operations. Failure to pass the entire $108.1 billion supplemental request by mid-July, officials said, will exhaust all remaining military personnel and operations funding by late July and leave the department unable to meet both military and civilian payroll.
Service members and certain “essential” civilian personnel, including those serving in the war zones, would continue to serve without pay. Nonessential civilian employees would be laid off per applicable personnel rules, the Pentagon said.
One influential member of Congress, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, has said there is no threat to military paychecks and that the Pentagon’s stance is an unnecessary scare tactic.
Specifically, the Pentagon has asked for authority to transfer $5.7 billion from the military personnel accounts of the Navy and Air Force to the Army’s personnel accounts; and, separately, $4 billion from the Navy and Air Force operations and maintenance accounts and the Department of Defense Working Capital Fund, to the Army and U.S. Special Operations Command operations and maintenance accounts.
The personnel and O&M accounts, and the Working Capital Fund, were funded in the regular annual defense budget for fiscal 2008, which contained no money to pay for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the war funds had not been approved by late November, officials warned that, with only limited budget transfer authority, it would be forced to take draconian measures, including the layoffs of tens of thousands of civilian employees.
Congress subsequently approved a $70 billion “bridge” fund, forestalling the potential crisis.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now cost an average of $11.5 billion a month, according to the Pentagon.
Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/05/military_defensebudget_army_supplemental_052808w/