Air Force, Navy funds may be needed to cover Army costs

With the fate of the fiscal 2007 wartime supplemental still unknown, Defense Secretary Robert 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.

In a letter Wednesday to Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Gates reiterated his concerns that failure to appropriate the war funds in the next several weeks will have "disruptive" effects on readiness, Army personnel and their families.

"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," he told Byrd.

Gates stressed that the military already has asked to reprogram $1.7 billion from lower-priority projects to pay for operations. In total, the department's transfer authority is capped at $7.5 billion in fiscal 2007 -- leaving Defense officials with only $4.2 billion after the upcoming transfer request.

Efforts to obtain Byrd's reaction to the proposed reprogramming of Air Force and Navy funds were unsuccessful.

"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," Gates said in his letter to Byrd. "The technical and limited ability of the department to transfer funds should not create a sense of complacency regarding the stressing need for the supplemental."

By referring to July, Gates sought to rebut findings of a March 28 Congressional Research Service memorandum to the Senate Budget Committee, which concluded that the Army has enough money in its existing budget to fund operations and maintenance through the end of May. With the existing transfer authority, the Army would have enough money to continue operations until the end of July, CRS said.

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.

The situation, Gates wrote, will get more dire the longer the Pentagon goes without supplemental funding. If the military does not receive the funds by mid-May, he said 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.

"We can -- and I am certain, will -- have a constructive dialogue about the funding options facing the department in the weeks to come," Gates said in his letter. "However, it is a simple fact that if the fiscal year 2007 supplemental legislation is not enacted soon, the Army faces a real and serious funding problem."