Extra funds push war costs over a half trillion dollars

[thedrifter]

October 09, 2006
Extra funds push war costs over a half trillion dollars

By Rick Maze
Staff writer

When the $70 billion added by Congress to the 2007 defense appropriations bill is counted, the price tag for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now tops $500 billion.

Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, R-Fla., the House Appropriations defense subcommittee chairman who helped craft the compromise bill, said the $70 billion “provides essential funding for the war fighter in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.”

The bill allocates $5.3 billion for personnel costs, $44.3 billion for operations and maintenance and $19.8 billion for procurement. Also, there is $407 million for weapons research and $100 million for drug interdiction. A report from the Pentagon about how the money will be spent is due in late October.

The personnel money will fund a boost in foreign language proficiency pay; provide extra combat zone pay and allowances for deployed and mobilized troops; and cover costs for Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance and Traumatic Injury Insurance.


All the services receive some money, but the Army gets the lion’s share, about $42.7 billion just for the active-duty force.

Not everyone is pleased that military spending on the wars now adds up to $507 billion. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said the bill “throws billions of dollars into the sands of Iraq while, at the same time, this administration and the Republican Congress call for drastic cuts to dozens of vital domestic programs.”

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., said, “Congress has already appropriated $317 billion for the invasion and occupation — a staggering sum … roughly $11 million every hour of every day.”

The Bush administration said in 2003 that U.S. costs would be low because Iraq’s oil production would help pay expenses, Woolsey said. “Had Americans been given the facts about the money involved and the lack of [weapons of mass destruction], the president would never have received the green light to go into Iraq in the first place.”

The $70 billion is being called a “bridge” fund, a mechanism also used last year to provide extra cash for ongoing operations until a formal supplemental budget request can be submitted for review. The amount is $20 billion more than last year and $20 billion more than the White House had sought for this year because the Army and Marine Corps went outside normal channels to ask Congress for help in repairing or replacing war-ravaged equipment.

In a report accompanying the bill, lawmakers said the high operation tempo of the wars, “combined with severe environmental conditions, results in an equipment wear-out factor several times the peacetime rate.”

“Combat losses add to the overall deterioration in the readiness rating of entire categories of equipment, ranging from night-vision devices to communications equipment to combat and support vehicles,” the report states.

“Our forces are tearing up equipment at an alarming rate,” said Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., a House Appropriations Committee member. “Without this reset funding, we run the risk of witnessing the return of a hollow Army that cannot serve our national interests.”

Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 09, 2006
Pay package in place
2.2 percent all-ranks raise would be lowest in 12 years

By Rick Maze
Staff writer

After months of discussion about the appropriate size of military pay raises in wartime, the Jan. 1 pay hike for the troops is now set at 2.2 percent.

That is exactly what the Bush administration asked for in its defense budget blueprint in February, and, in the end, Congress decided it could not afford to do more for service members.

While the 2.2 percent increase would keep pace with wage growth in the private sector last year, it would be the smallest military pay increase since 1994 and would do nothing to close what many military advocates say is a lingering gap between military and private-sector pay that stands at about 4.5 percent.


In the interest of continuing to close that gap incrementally, the House earlier this year endorsed a 2.7 percent raise proposed by the House Armed Services military personnel panel. But that proposal never stood a chance of winning full congressional approval, according to sources involved in negotiations to write the final defense budget.

After the Senate approved a 2.2 percent increase in its version of the defense authorization bill and the House and Senate appropriations committees, which write the annual defense funding bill, set aside only enough money for a 2.2 percent raise, the 2.7 percent hike supported by the House Armed Services Committee was left for dead.

“We can certainly count, and three out of four means that we lost,” said one of the House negotiators, referring to the fact that only one of the four committees with a hand in the defense budget backed the bigger raise.

The negotiator asked not to be identified because the internal congressional discussions about the defense budget are considered highly sensitive.

Despite the lack of money in the defense appropriations bill to pay for a larger raise, negotiators working on the companion defense authorization bill still could have approved a larger pay increase. But the military services would have had to cover the added expense — about $400 million to $500 million for the extra 0.5 percentage-point increase — “out of hide,” by diverting money from other programs.

“‘Out-of-hide’ these days means ‘out-of-war,’ because we would be cutting into the costs” of carrying out wartime operations to pay for a larger raise, the House negotiator said. “We are just not willing to do that, especially given the fact that it appears the final defense appropriations bill may underfund even the 2.2 percent raise.”

The appropriations bill provides $86.4 billion for personnel programs, including pay, allowances, bonuses and incentive pays — $13.2 billion less than the $99.6 billion requested by the administration.

However, that does not mean personnel accounts will be left $13.2 billion short in 2007; the difference will be made up by differences in how spending accounts are totaled, a variety of likely adjustments and a decision by appropriators to push some costs into the separate supplemental budget for war-related expenses.

While the Jan. 1 raise is not the best news for service members, congressional negotiators did approve White House and Pentagon plans for a second pay raise April 1 for some people in paygrades E-5 through E-7 and in all warrant officer grades.

These targeted raises, a continuation of a multiyear effort by the Pentagon to adjust the basic pay tables that was halted for two years, range from less than 1 percent to 8.3 percent. That would come on top of the 2.2 percent increase for all paygrades Jan. 1.

Money to pay for the targeted raises is included in the final appropriations bill, which was approved by the House on Sept. 26 and the Senate on Sept. 29.

Congressional negotiators have completed work on a compromise defense authorization bill, but at press time, neither the House nor Senate had taken a final vote on the measure.

The targeted raises are designed to adjust the military pay tables to bring salaries of warrant officers and midgrade enlisted members in line with private-sector wages for people with similar experience and responsibility. The rationale is that the education levels and duty responsibilities of people in those paygrades have increased markedly over the past couple of decades, but their pay has not kept pace.

The 2.2 percent raise, which applies to both basic pay and drill pay, is unlikely to change even if work on the authorization bill stretches beyond the November elections, because the appropriations bill that sets funding levels will be signed into law by then.

The proposed 2.7 percent raise would have continued a trend that began in 2001 in which annual military raises were kept at least half a percentage point ahead of wage growth in the private sector. This was designed to close a perceived civilian-military pay gap that, according to some military associations, has existed since 1982.

The perceived gap, which grew as large as 13.5 percent in the late 1990s, dropped to 4.5 percent with the Jan. 1, 2006, raise and will remain there for 2007.

Ellie