DoD: 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!'

[unhappycamper]

DoD Furloughs Could Start Next Month
July 23, 2010
Military.com|by Greg Grant

If Congress fails to pass a wartime supplemental spending bill by next week, before the congressional August recess, the Pentagon will begin to run out of money for operations and to pay military and civilian personnel beginning next month, the service under-secretaries told lawmakers Thursday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly warned Congress that DoD would begin to do “stupid” things if it fails to pass a war time supplemental before the August recess. “If the supplemental was not passed we would be in an emergency situation,” said Navy Under Secretary Bob Work, speaking today at a hearing before a House Armed Services Committee.

For the Navy, no supplemental by next week would result in an immediate and significant disruption in operations, said Work. Things would rapidly worsen from there with civilian pay beginning to run out in the middle of August, followed by large scale furloughs; paychecks for active duty personnel would stop going out in mid-September.

“Quite frankly the (Navy) department was expecting the supplemental before the 4th of July, there was really no serious thinking that it would go beyond summer recess,” he said.

Absent supplemental spending, the Army begins to run out of money in the domestic operations and maintenance accounts in the middle of August, said Joseph Westphal, the Army Under Secretary. “We are dangerously close to those deadlines.” The Army has already been forced to dip into its base budget to pay for ongoing operations in Afghanistan.




unhappycamper comment: It's really too bad that we cannot find 218 congresscritters in the House to do the right thing. The threats of civilian layoffs will more than likely be the rallying cry of the Dems/RWers to quickly pass this 'emergency' supplemental.

[droidamus2]

1. Wait a minute

If this is supposed to be 'emergency' supplemental money why is it that it sounds like the military was already expecting it and had it built into their budgets. I don't want to see the lower level people in the military or working for the military to be hurt but at some point we have to make the military realize that our tax dollars are not their personal piggy bank. This reminds me of 'military contracts' where the low bidder gets the contract but the contract is written so all overruns will be covered which means the original bid means nothing. The military submits budgets and then continuously applies for and gets 'supplemental emergency' money. Maybe they are threatening layoffs immediately because they don't want anybody asking questions what I hear from them is 'give us our money now or there will be consequences'. There base budget should include Afghanistan to begin with NO MORE off-budget wars.

[uponit7771]

2. At what point does America admit that it has a Military Industrial Complex?

Seems like we're way past that point now

[Lasher]

3. Why would they run out of money for domestic operations?

Why not instead run out of money for mercenaries in Iraq?