Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - State of the United States Army

Interview

Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee - State of the United States Army

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And General and Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for your service.

And I want to ask General Casey, if I might, a question because earlier this year the Army -- it was an Army posture hearing I believe that your predecessor, General Schoomaker, raised concerns about the effect of not delivering adequate and predictable funding, particularly in the form of supplemental funding for the war effort. We're 46 days into the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2008; we don't have an authorization bill, we don't have a bridge funding bill for DOD, and we don't have an FY'08 Global War on Terror Supplemental. We recently sent a Defense appropriations bill to the president which he has signed into law, but that has little to do with the war effort. So my question is, what will be the effect of no timely bridge funding or supplemental funding? Will you have to cancel service contracts, lay people off, slow down work at depots -- those sorts of things? If you could address that subject.

GEN. CASEY: The secretary -- Secretary Gates has instructed us to begin planning for that possibility. The signing of the appropriations bill did two things: One, it gave us money for our base budget, but it also stopped the continuing resolution funding that was going to support the war. So now we're faced with having to fund the war without a bridge out of the base budget.

Our Army O&M account is about $27 billion. When you look at our Army base budget needs plus the war, you're talking about six-and-a- half -- $6.6 billion a month. If the Army is asked to fund this without any type of bridge or without any additional resources, we're going to run through that $27 billion probably around mid-February. And we cannot wait 'til then to start making some of the decisions that will have to be made. Our employment contracts -- many of them require 60 or 45 days notice before you can furlough somebody. We have many of the services that are provided by civilians, by contractors, and it would have a hugely detrimental effect on the home base. We will -- we will beggar the home front to make sure that our soldiers that are in theater have everything that they need, and it will put a terrible burden on soldiers, on families, on the institutional Army, our ability to train.

Timely funding is absolutely essential. An organization of our size cannot live effectively with unpredictable funding, and we need that supplemental passed soon or we're going to have to start planning for the possibility that we're not going to have it.

SEN. THUNE: General Schoomaker also testified that the Army was forced to cash-flow itself through the first quarter of FY'06. Could you explain what that means, and will the Army have to do that again?

GEN. CASEY: We're in that position now. We are -- the O&M account is our account that offers us the greatest flexibility. Most of the other accounts are constrained by specific -- we call the term "color of money." But we would find ourselves having to spend that O&M money not only to support the Army but also to support the war effort. So we are in that position today and using up the funds at a rate of $6.5 billion a month against a $27 billion total.

SEN. THUNE: Mr. Secretary, you had -- there's a saying that you recruit a soldier but you reenlist a family, and this year the Congress has yet to send the MILCON VA appropriations bill to the president to get signed into law. MILCON funding, as you know, goes to support important aspects of military quality-of-life issues such as barracks, training facilities, childcare centers and family housing units. What is the status of the Army's MILCON accounts? And without a MILCON appropriations bill signed into law, when is the Army going to experience problems paying for military infrastructure and quality- of-life expenditures?

SEC. GEREN: The impact of no MILCON bill affects us on several levels. As you know, last year the MILCON bill was slow -- we didn't get it until well into the fiscal year.

We are operating in the MILCON area still under a CR, but that holds up about $5 billion that we have planned for all types of military construction projects.

Now, the BRAC piece of this is still able to be funded under the CR, but at reduced levels. So it threatens our ability to meet the BRAC timelines.

But MILCON is a significant piece of the quality-of-life for soldiers and their families, and if we cannot get the MILCON bill -- it holds up about $5 billion with the delay, and it will impact our construction for barracks, for other types of quality-of-life improvements, and impact our ability to meet our timelines of moving soldiers around the system. It poses a real challenge for us, and every day that goes by after the end of the last fiscal year puts that part of our Army planning and budgeting under stress.

SEN. THUNE: General, how does these funding issues -- the lack thereof -- affect our ability to reset and transform?

GEN. CASEY: From my perspective as the chief, two primary aspects of lack of stable, predictable funding -- in particular, the current situation: First is, it makes my job of organizing, training and equipping the force harder. Every time you have a delay or (probation ?), you get second and third order effects that takes you months to recover from.

I mentioned in my opening statement about last year. We got the funding -- the GWOT funding with the base, and as a result of that, we were able to get right into reset. We reset 27 brigades last year -- 18 in the active component; nine in the Reserve components. Our depots processed 123,000 big pieces of equipment like tanks and Bradleys, and they fixed over 10,000 humvees for the Guard and Reserve. So there's a lot we can do with the money on time.

The second element I'd comment on is just in my roles as the spokesman for the Army soldiers and families. We have about nine brigades that are coming back from Iraq right now, between September and January, and it just sends absolutely the wrong signal to those soldiers and families who have been out there for 15 months to have the potential of the services that support them when they come home cancelled.

SEN. THUNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary and General.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source