Congress and the White House are laying the groundwork for a blame game if the Pentagon runs out of money because of a standoff over the Iraq and Afghanistan war-spending bill.
Despite the rhetoric flying down Pennsylvania Avenue, however, the Pentagon may have several options to keep its war operations going into early summer.
President Bush yesterday repeated his veto threat and warned Democrats that they will take the heat if they don’t deliver a bill without strings.
“If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible,” Bush said in a speech to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
Democrats are standing their ground and insisting on their prerogative to set war policy.
“If the president vetoes it, he’ll be responsible for the troops not getting the money,” said Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee. “He’s being very arrogant, and I think that’s inappropriate.”
The Pentagon and the White House have started sounding alarms and sketching worst-case scenarios if Congress does not pass the 2007 supplemental by April 15.
Democrats note that the Republican Congress passed war supplementals even later than that date. Last year, it gave the Pentagon extra money to tide it over while it awaited the supplemental money.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters earlier this week that “the White House spin machine” is working to muddy the question of when the Pentagon truly needs the supplemental funds.
Murtha says he believes the April 15 date for funds running out is incorrect. Based on the inquiries he’s made, he said, the Pentagon will start running out of money at the beginning of June.
“We’ve never had a year where they didn’t give us bad information,” said Murtha, who’s known for his contacts inside the military. “We’ve been asking people and we think it’ll be the end of May.”
A former Secretary of the Navy and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) said that the military will not be put in an easy position if it does not get the funds on time, “but somehow they work it out.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters recently that if the supplemental is not passed by April 15, the Army will be compelled to consider curtailing and suspending training for Reserve and National Guard units, slow up training of units scheduled to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly cut funding for the upgrade and renovation of barracks and other facilities.
Last month, the Army’s outgoing chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, sounded even more urgent alarms. He said that his service faced “near disastrous” accounting problems last year because Congress did not pass the supplemental until June 15. Schoomaker said that the Army was forced to take extraordinary measures to “slam the brakes” on expenditures.
To manage the shortfall of cash last year, the Army slowed production at depots, laid people off and instituted a hiring freeze. It also tightly controlled travel expenses and delayed IT purchases, Schoomaker said.
Rhetoric aside, the military and the White House have several options, even though somewhat limited, to try and ward off a potential crisis. And in principle, the Pentagon can find the necessary funding to sustain its operations on the battlefield, but that could have repercussions elsewhere in the defense budget.
For example, the Department of Defense could ask Congress for a reprogramming authority – transferring money between accounts or reallocating money within a certain account – but that move could only cover about three weeks of war expenses.
The Pentagon can also shift around un-obligated balances for operations and maintenance in the $70 billion bridge fund, which is part of the 2007 defense appropriations bill and is supposed to tide the military over while it awaits supplemental funding. That shift would not need any kind of formal reprogramming or congressional approval, according to sources.
Should the situation get dire, the secretary of defense could invoke the Civil War-era “Feed and Forage Act” to continue war operations. The act allows the military to obligate money for clothing, food, fuel, housing, transportation and medical supplies in excess of available appropriations for the year, without first getting congressional approval.
The authority under the Feed and Forage Act has some limitations, but it allows the military to continue its essential contracts and operations. It requires congressional notification, and Congress has to appropriate the necessary funds after that. Obligated funds can only be disbursed after a congressional appropriation.
In 2005, when the supplemental was delayed until May, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that he would have to invoke the Feed and Forage Act to keep the deployed troops operating because funds were running out at the beginning of May. The supplemental was signed May 5, 2005.
Rumsfeld also invoked the act in 2001 after the terrorist attacks, but Congress came up with money quickly, before the Pentagon incurred any expenses.
The Pentagon and the administration can also use the act as a tool to tell Congress that it can spend money without the lawmakers’ power of the purse.
“If there is no relief, they [the Pentagon] would invoke the Feed and Forage provision,” an Office of Management and Budget spokesman told The Hill. Disruptions in the Pentagon’s war operations will start around April 15, he said, and if supplemental funds are still lacking by May 15, the Department of Defense may warn that it will invoke the act.
But Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a defense appropriator, said he expects the conference committee to come up with a middle ground between the House and the Senate that includes a timeline for withdrawal and looks a little more like the House version.
He said there is no way Congress will pass a “clean” supplemental that pays for the war with no strings attached. “There’s no way the administration is going to get its way on this,” Moran said. “But when you’re at 30 percent in the polls, what can you do?”
Elana Schor and Ian Swanson contributed to this report. |
