Juggling.
By RS Insider Posted in Congress — Comments (24) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
You remember the recent argument about whether the Democrats delay over finalizing the supplemental was going to impact the troops or not? The Congressional Research Service said there was enough money if we could juggle funding, and the Republicans and Generals said, sure, we can juggle funds around for awhile…but that’s going to hurt US soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Democrats suggested the military get busy juggling, ‘cause they were going on vacation.
Well, the RS Insider hears some balls starting to drop already, and according to the subscription-only National Journal today, those balls are dropping on US troops. For example…
- • Defense Secretary Gates will soon ask lawmakers to approve the transfer of $1.6 billion from Air Force and Navy personnel accounts to cover the costs of Army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- • The Army already has had to reduce quality of life improvements, including upgrades to barracks and other facilities, Gates wrote.
- • Officials also have reduced repair and maintenance used for deployment training and cut back on training exercises for non-deployed Guard and Reserve units.
And it could get much worse, very quickly. If funding is not approved by mid-May, then…
- …the Army will reduce the pace of equipment overhaul work at Army depots…
- …curtail training rotations for some brigades scheduled for overseas deployment, and…
- …delay transforming Army brigades into more modular units.
Perhaps this is why Democratic Leaders Pelosi and Reid reversed course yesterday, finally agreeing to meet with President Bush. Still, the House Democrats failure to appoint conferees set completion of the Supplemental back significantly, and forced the US Military to juggle military families. And it could get worse if they don’t move forward quickly.
On the bright side, at least Nancy Pelosi had a relaxing and successful Spring Break, right?
Below the fold is Secretary Gates' letter from yesterday to Senator Byrd.
April 11, 2007
Honorable Robert C. Byrd
Chairman
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
Room S-131 Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20510-6025
Dear Mr. Chairman:
At recent hearings before the Congress, the latest on March 29 before the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, General Pace and I have been asked about the impact that delaying enactment of the supplemental could have on the Department of Defense operations. Considering the importance of this issue to your ongoing deliberations, I want to share our response with you as well as provide additional context.
On September, 2006, the Congress approved the Fiscal Year 2007 Department of Defense base budget and an additional $70 billion for war-related costs. At that time, Department of Defense officials stressed that the $70 billion would be depleted by mid-April or early May of this year and, therefore, a Fiscal Year 2007 Spring Supplemental would be necessary in that timeframe.
As you will recall, last year the Fiscal Year 2006 Spring Supplemental was late and resulted in significant disruption to Army quality of life, training and maintenance accounts. Faced with this delay, the Army began in May to curtail supply orders; cancel non-essential travel, training and conferences; suspend shipments of goods not associated with support to deployed forces; release temporary civilian employees; and freeze new civilian hiring and awarding of new contracts.
While some have suggested that the Army can operate this year until July with existing resources and authorities, in reality there are significant limits, costs and disruptions associated with the budgetary maneuvers necessary to continue Army operations, as we saw last year. The technical and limited ability of the Department to transfer funds should not create a sense of complacency regarding the pressing need for the supplemental.
The overall size of the Department of Defense budget is considerable in the aggregate. However, the Department’s ability to move money between accounts to address emergent problems is limited by the Congress. The Department operates under an annual cap limiting the amount of funds that can be transferred between appropriations accounts. For fiscal year 2007, the Department’s transfer authority is capped at $7.5 billion, of which $1.7 billion has already been proposed, leaving the Department with $5.6 billion in transfer authority for the remainder of fiscal year 2007.
Given the normal transfers required during any fiscal year, this limitation in transfer authority makes it extremely difficult for the Department to adjust to developing needs. Further, under agreed upon reprogramming procedures, any one of the four congressional defense committees can effectively block a proposed reprogramming.
There is an added complication. This year the Department has experienced increases war-related expenditures. A greater number of forces are deployed and the operational tempo of those forces is higher than projected when the $70 billion war supplemental was approved last fall. Spending rates are higher and, therefore, the impact of a delayed Spring Supplemental is occurring earlier and is greater in magnitude.
Consequently, actions similar to last year are already being initiated by the Army and will accelerate. Specifically, the Army will soon begin to take the following actions:
• Reducing Army quality of life initiatives including the routine upgrade of barracks and other facilities;
• Reducing the repair and maintenance of equipment necessary for deployment training;
• Curtailing the training of Army Guard and Reserve units within the United States, reducing their readiness levels.
The actions of the Department are in consonance with the findings of the March 28, 2007 Congressional Research Service report. That report acknowledges the challenges facing the Army budget and states, "the Amy may very well decide that it must slow down its non-war related operations before money would run out by, for example, limiting the facility maintenance and repairs, delaying equipment overhauls, restricting travel and meetings, and perhaps, slowing down training."
In addition, the Department shortly will be presenting to the Congress a $1.6 billion reprogramming request that proposes to shift $0.8 billion from both the Navy and Air Force military personnel accounts to the Army Operation and Maintenance accounts.
If supplemental funding is not received by mid-May, the Army will have to consider further actions, to include:
• Reducing the pace of equipment overhaul work at Army depots which will likely exacerbate the equipment availability problems facing stateside units;
• Curtailing training rotations for Brigade Combat Teams currently scheduled for overseas deployment. Such a step would likely require the further extension of currently deployed forces until their replacements were judged ready for deployment.
• Delaying acceleration of additional modularized Army brigades necessary to expand the Army unit rotational pool and reduce the stress on existing units.
We can – and I am certain, will – have a constructive dialogue about the funding options facing the Department in the weeks to come. However, it is a simple fact of life that if the Fiscal Year 2007 supplemental legislation is not enacted soon, the Army faces a real and serious funding problem that will require increasingly disruptive and costly measures to be initiated – measures that will, inevitably, negatively impact readiness and Army personnel and their families.
As always, thank you for your steadfast support to our men and women in uniform, and we stand ready to provide you additional information to assist you in your deliberations.
Sincerely,
Robert M. Gates
« Rep. Capuano's Newspeak for Censorship — Comments (5) | Now You Can Grade House Republicans — Comments (0) »
Juggling. 24 Comments (0 topical, 24 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Tbone
Hard to do really, at least quickly.
Civil Servants have all sorts of protections from rapid firing to keep them from being used as political pawns.
Even RIF's are a bit tough.
_______________________________
Dennis Miller for President...no more wimps!
Layoffs are very different from firings. As the Executive, you could, appropriations laws permitting, just say we're moving the money over there and you're laid off for lack of funds. The fed's anti-deficiency laws prohibit any expenditure without adequate supporting funds. So you just lay them off for lack of funds until there is an appropriation that would support them.
Worst case scenario, aside from the screams of outrage, is many months later an arbitrator, board, or court says you shouldn't have laid them off and orders you to give them backpay. So you go to Congress and ask for an appropriation to give them backpay. Let's see a Democrat Congress turn that one down.
In Vino Veritas
you can't run dining facilities without civilian cooks. All depot level maintenance is performed by civilians and we have structured the maintenace process so that most maintenance beyond oil changes are conducted at depot level.
For the stateside Army installations are run by civilians, we have some installations under the direct control of civilians. Most of the doctors in stateside military hospitals are civilians. Finance and personnel above the tactical unit level are civilians. Supply and real property management are civilians.
Some of this work is accomplished by Department of Defense civilians and some is accomplished by contractors where the civilian workforce was privatized under the A-76 process.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
a function would not be a good idea, but there's not an infrastructure function in any government that couldn't absorb a 10 - 30% RIF for some period of time, say a couple or three pay periods, and still continue its mission critical functions. Might not be pretty, but the major stuff would get done.
I always found it to have a crystalizing effect on people's decision making processes when the strategically placed layoff notices started going out. I'll admit to having been quite cynical about it and using it as a strategem to deal with recalcitrant legislators or unions. If some legislator is giving you a hard time about a bill or about funding, suddenly you find you just don't have the money to continue something that is important to him. If a union is giving you a hard time, put the boys on the street for a while. Makes decision making much easier.
And so what if you get told later that you shouldn't have done it? You go right back to the people you were messing with and make them pay for it; they can't usually say no.
In Vino Veritas
desire to make sure the troops they support in the war they don't get the training they need and deserve, the equipment needed for the job, and the moral backing we owe our military.
Not that any sensible person took that guff seriously anyway.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
The 3rd ID returned to Iraq in March 48 days short of their 12 months home between deployments. This is their third tour since 2003. Yesterday they got the good news that they will have to stay until at least the beginning of June 2008!!!
If the funding is not secured soon, they will be deployed 18 months this time. Great news for soldiers like my son who was stop lossed (should have been out this week in fact), and now get to serve and extra year and a half.
The base these fine soldiers are on was not a base but a firing range until 3 months ago. They have tents, trickle cold showers (12 per 200 men), sporadic air conditioning (130 degrees some days), one hot meal a day, unexploded ordinance, dust, and occasional mail delivery. That folks is it. They need everything from deodorant to crossword puzzle books. They work their tails off with little recognition, and few general supplies. They do not have access to phones, and many of them do not even have the chance to email.
Some of us are getting tired of the political posturing at the expense of our loved one's lives. Laying off civilians will not get the job done. Not training replacement troops only gets soldiers killed. Telling young men and women to continue to put their lives on hold causes moral problems that result it higher suicide rates and infighting among the troops.
Too bad, it seems, everyone in Washington has forgotten these are people who are on the FOBs and they are beginning to feel hopeless. Juggling sounds like fun, until you see the reality.
Sorry about the tone of this, but it is getting frustrating out here. We need action not posturing.
Soldier's Mom - Golfer's Wife - Home alone a lot
The sick part about this whole supplemental spending bill is the Democrats have managed to make our military a political football.
is where are the jerks and know-nothings who insisted only three days ago that there was no impact on the Army because of Congress's vacation?
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
It's not that they have thought about this, they haven't, but if momentarily they did it is quickly dismissed as partisan.
What really matters is the Great Eight Lawyers Scandal, you have to keep your eyes on the prize if you're a not to be fooled liberal.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
because they are going to post on this thread and they are going to address these issues or they aren't going to post any more.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
I posted a slightly snarky and skeptical response to the first thread I saw on this matter. I believe it was Gordon Taylor's thread. In fact, I was probably one of the first commenters on the subject, and what I learned later in that thread plus the ones following it turned me 180...although the "Sargent" part is still amusing.
For the record, I believe Mr.908 was a little skeptical, too. I hope the jerks and know-nothings to whom you refer are the ones who kept hammering away in the face of evidence presented.
who continued to argue that something they read on ThinkProgress trumped both the SecDef and JCS.
One of them has received the homework assignment. The others will as they report in.
We of Appalachian heritage believe in grudges. We worship them.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
I am currently honoring an intra-family grudge that began in the hills of South Carolina 50 years ago. Serious hillbilly Southern gothic stuff, with land and love involved. Missed the trifecta, since no one's honor is at stake.
there's honor - definitionally! Spoken as an expatriate Georgian who well understands generations-old grudges.
In Vino Veritas
I guess I meant that there's no one still alive whose honor is besmirched... but that's never stopped a good grudge before. Come to think of it, there's no one left alive who's been wronged in love either. All that remains is the land, and that will always be there.
how my gg/uncle wound up with my gg/grandfather's place after he was KIA at The Crater and put my gg/grandmother and her children on the "Indigent Soldiers' Widows and Orphans" list in 1868. If I ever do, God help somebody.
In Vino Veritas
It seems the more powerful grudges are not the Hatfield & McCoy kind, but the Hatfield & Hatfield kind. It can make for tense moments at the family reunion. That is, if there is a reunion at all. Speaking of grudges, Streiff is probably nursing one for ths threadjacking;)
Mr.908 is absolutely not "a little skeptical". He's way over the top skeptical, balanced by being world class cynical.
And for the record, he's just tickled pink that these discussions are carried on over a keyboard and not over a beer. Jail sucks. And there are some subjects that cause an imbalance in the ability to maintain self-control.
____
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
Imagine you're a DOD resource manager. Based on the funding you've been told you're going to get, you set priorities, make manning/resource decisions, and start to implement your plan.
Then, you hear on the TV that, because some Congressman wants to play a game of "Who Is More Macho" with the executive branch, you might not get the funds you'd been told to expect. CHAOS can ensue, as your organization scrambles to make do the best it can. And, efficiency and quality suffer in the process.
When you are constantly jumping through your backside, trying to respond to changes, you can't plan and run an efficient, cost-effective operation. You make more mistakes, you waste more money in the long run---because all the plans you've spent so much time and effort developing, just got blown out of the water!
Now, sometimes life blows your plan out of the water. When the "surge" hit, many of us had to scramble to reschedule predeployment training for Army units whose deployment schedules had just been accelerated.
This is different. If the Dems hold up the money, if they expect the DOD to rejuggle the resources it already has, simply because the Dems want to play chicken with the WH---now, that is a self-inflicted wound.
Will these Dems take responsibility for the chaos they are causing, and the resultant loss of efficiency in DOD operations?
(Insert laughter here).
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
you know "hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us...Have it your way!"
Now anyone who has the slightest experience with budgets knows that the prospect of losing funds for existing operations will disrupt those operations months in advance. The military is not some alternative universe where this fact of life does not apply.
I'm mixing metaphors here, but Pharaoh, I mean the Democratic leadership, obviously expects the military to make bricks without straw. "Moses, Moses, Moses" as Yul Brynner would say.
...who believe that a cut in the rate of increase in a budget is a dagger to the heart(to steal one of Chuckie Schumer's favorite metaphors)of their pet entitlement programs.
If the Democrats on Defense Committees actually authorize the reprogramming of dollars to fund the war, THEY are responsible for taking away the money from the bases; THEY are the ones responsible for shutting down MWR facilities, THEY are the ones responsible for hurting our families stateside.
If they refuse to reprogram the money, THEY are the ones responsible for not funding the troops.
Either way, THEY are responsible. These reprogrammings are never run by the full committee or subcommittees in the House.
employees. That is what the private sector does. I am sure that there are a lot of civilian employees that wouldn't be missed for a month or two and they could use their free time to ask the Dims' leadership why they have no paycheck.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.