By Bill Bartel
The Virginian-Pilot
Congress’ inability to approve a 2011 budget is causing significant problems for the Navy, officials say, by delaying ship repairs; reducing aircraft flight hours and ship steaming hours; postponing construction projects; and disrupting the orderly moves of sailors and their families.
With half the fiscal year already gone, Congress has failed to reach an agreement on an annual federal budget and has instead passed a series of continuing resolutions that temporarily keep the government running for a few weeks at a time. The latest resolution, approved last week, provides funding at last year’s level – minus about $6 billion – until April 8.
Democrats, who control the Senate, and Republicans, who have a majority in the House, remain far apart in budget talks, with the GOP generally wanting tens of billions more in spending cuts than Democrats say they will support. If no deal is struck by the April deadline to approve a budget to carry the government until Sept. 30, Congress has two choices: pass another temporary funding bill – the seventh since fall – or allow a government shutdown.
Hampton Roads’ representatives are divided on what to do about the budget and the immediate concerns with military spending. The House and Senate are in recess this week, and most legislators are back in their districts meeting with constituents.
In the meantime, with no promise of funding past early next month, Navy officials have warned that they can’t make plans and have had to cut expenses just to meet payroll. The short-term budget problems do not affect the war efforts overseas, but that is not the case back home. , Hillson said. which he acknowledged “places a significant hardship on our military families.” payment?’ ”
“While virtually every account will be impacted in some way, we will be especially hard hit in operations and maintenance, new ship construction and other procurement accounts,” Lt. Courtney Hillson, a Navy spokeswoman, said this week.
A $4.6 billion shortage in operations and maintenance funds has led the Navy to cancel 29 surface ship repairs, including projects at Hampton Roads shipyards, and defer maintenance on aircraft and aircraft engines
The cash crunch also has forced reductions in maintenance at bases, as well as cutbacks on training and naval exercises, she said.
Navy Secretary Ray Ma-bus told a Senate panel last week that his department has a $600 million shortage in Navy and Marine Corps manpower accounts.
“As a result of this shortfall, the services must raid other accounts in order to meet payroll for the year,” Mabus said in his written statement to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
He told lawmakers that to ease the cash shortage, the Navy is making more short-notice decisions when changing the permanent duty stations for service members,
Typically, sailors have several months to plan for a move and deal with selling or renting a house, finding a new job for a spouse or placing children in a new school, said Craig Quigley, a retired admiral who heads the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance, a group that lobbies to protect the region’s military assets.
Shorter-notice decisions about transfers put more stress on the service members, Quigley said.
“In addition to doing my day job of worrying about running a ship … now you’ve got to worry about ‘What is it going to cost me in my wallet?’ ” he said. “ ‘Do I, or do I not, sell the house?’ ‘Can I rent it and meet my mortgage
Quigley said that even if the budget deadlock were resolved soon, restarting the operations and maintenance projects, training and other stalled programs would not happen overnight. budget impasse is resolved.
The Navy “can’t cram 12 months of shipyard work into six. You have to rebalance and reprioritize,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, who has supported deep cuts in federal spending, said he’s sympathetic to the military’s problems. The Virginia Beach Republican, who was elected in the fall, said he has pressed GOP House leaders without success to pass a Pentagon budget, even if the remainder of government spending is deadlocked, because national defense “is an essential and unifying duty of Congress.”
He has also lobbied leaders to keep Congress in session, including weekends, until the
U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes said he’s aware of the immediate concerns of the military but thinks the more pressing national security issue is cutting spending to get control of the rising federal deficit. about the severity of the Pentagon’s budget concerns, noting that Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed billions in cuts last summer and that military leaders didn’t express great alarm late last year when Democrats controlled the House but failed to pass the 2011 budget before the start of the fiscal year. The Pentagon has not been forthcoming in providing more specific financial records to Congress, Forbes said.
The Chesapeake Republican expressed skepticism
Defense officials “want to say, ‘It’s OK to make cuts when we say to make cuts,’” he said. “But if you do anything more or less, then the sky is falling.”
Forbes, chairman of the readiness subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, cited what he sees as a more serious long-term problem: Starting in a few years, the United States will have to make huge investments to upgrade its aging military hardware, including ships and aircraft. effort to cut billions from the current budget, said the problem stems from Congress’ decision last year to retain the Bush administration tax cuts on incomes, inheritances and businesses. That added $3.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, he said. to make now.”
If government leaders can’t get control of spending now by enforcing budget cuts, there won’t be money to pay for those projects, he said.
U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Newport News Democrat who has opposed the Republican-led
Now, Scott said, to make up for the tax cuts, Republicans want to slash spending for education grants, public transportation, community services and other important social programs.
“I said last year that letting the tax cuts expire is an ugly choice,” he said. “But look at the choice we have
Even if this year’s budget deadlock is resolved, there is more of the same on the horizon.
House and Senate leaders are already drawing up plans – and battle lines – in their debate over the 2012 spending plan, which will take effect Oct. 1. At the same time, several groups in Congress have been proposing long-term plans to make deep cuts in federal spending over several years to begin to reduce the $14 trillion federal debt.
Bill Bartel, (757) 446-2398 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (757) 446-2398 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, bill.bartel@pilotonline.com