Military equipment woes prompt call for larger bridge fund

To resolve budgetary woes facing the Army and Marine Corps, House appropriators want to add at least $10 billion to the supplemental bridge fund for military operations contained in the fiscal 2007 Defense spending bill that the House passed in June.

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young, R-Fla., and ranking member John Murtha, D-Pa., both said Wednesday that the military's ground forces need billions of dollars guaranteed by Oct. 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year, to repair and replace equipment destroyed or damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This is a serious problem and this is not something you want to put off," Young said. "It doesn't need to wait until next year to get fixed."

Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker has said repeatedly that the Army needs $17.1 billion in fiscal 2007 to "reset" or restore the service's equipment stocks. The Marine Corps, meanwhile, estimates it will have an equipment bill next year that could soar as high as $11.9 billion, though Young estimated that number to be between $2 billion and $5 billion.

Schoomaker, in particular, has lamented the slow-moving pace of enacting wartime supplemental spending bills, which he says have led to delays in depot work for much-needed ground equipment. Adding equipment money to the bridge fund -- essentially emergency supplemental appropriations to support combat operations during the first few months of fiscal 2007 -- would allow the Army and Marine Corps to avoid a long wait.

The base fiscal 2007 Defense spending bill and the accompanying bridge fund now set aside $6 billion to reset Army equipment, and a lesser amount for the Marines. Army leaders had hoped to have around $12 billion approved for their equipment needs by the beginning of the fiscal year, with expectations of getting more money in a full fiscal 2007 supplemental spending bill that Congress would take up in early 2007.

Young announced his intention to add money to the bridge fund during a closed-door subcommittee meeting Wednesday. The panel had met to review two budgetary reprogramming requests totaling $5 billion that the Pentagon submitted earlier this month.

Also Wednesday, Murtha and House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., wrote President Bush to seek an emergency funding request to pay for Army equipment repair and replacement in the fiscal 2007 bridge fund. House Armed Services ranking member Ike Skelton, D-Mo., wrote a similar letter Tuesday, imploring Bush to submit an emergency spending bill to pay for the Army's equipment needs.

Young said in an interview that a request from the White House would "make it a lot easier" to ultimately approve a much larger spending bill. Vice President Cheney, in several recent conversations, expressed that he "understands my concerns," he added.

Young also alerted Senate appropriators to his plan, but said he has not received a response. He added that congressional budget caps would not restrict Congress from boosting the size of the bridge fund, which is treated as emergency spending.

Nonetheless, the House's proposal to enlarge the $50 billion bridge fund could widen a $5 billion gap the two chambers already face on their versions of the Defense appropriations bill, potentially exacerbating what are expected to be difficult conference negotiations.

But Young and Murtha both stressed that problems facing ground units are severe, and must be remedied as soon as possible. The Army's fiscal 2006 equipment reset accounts are $4.9 billion short, adding to already sagging wartime readiness in many active-duty and reserve units not deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Army readiness is being driven to these low levels, in part, by a lack of equipment for training and deployment overseas," Obey and Murtha wrote in their letter to Bush. "Yet, thousands of the Army's main fighting vehicles and trucks are lined up at repair depots around the country, sitting in disuse for lack of maintenance funding."