White House says military pay, readiness in jeopardy

Seeking to ratchet up pressure on Capitol Hill on the fiscal 2002 supplemental, White House officials and congressional Republican leaders pointed Wednesday to a variety of starkly unhappy consequences for homeland defense and the U.S. military if the measure is not approved soon.

"We don't want to be in a situation where we can't prepare our ships for war--we don't want to be in a situation where we have to cut down training or we can't do the steaming hours or the flight hours," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., following a White House meeting between President Bush and congressional Republican leaders.

"We also want to make sure the pay is there for our men and women in the armed services," Hastert said.

"Our men and women who are fighting for democracy and freedom in Afghanistan today are running out of funds," said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

Fleischer opened his daily briefing with a list of possible spending shortfalls that will occur unless Congress "acts and acts quickly."

He said the Defense Department will be unable to meet the last two military pay dates in September; air force and army depots that overhaul aircraft will not be able to pay salaries to some 35,800 civilian personnel and may have to furlough some or all of them; 2.5 million veterans may not receive their September disability checks; the USS Stennis aircraft carrier will not be overhauled as scheduled this month.

Fleischer added that the Transportation Security Administration would have to suspend purchases of 800 bomb-detection systems and 5,370 explosive trace detection units; suspend hiring and training of passenger screeners; and delay the rollout of new security procedures at 429 airports.