In a report out this week, GAO takes issue with the way that the Administration has been requesting funding for the DOD's actions in the GWOT and the "longer war against terror." This issue is about more than just a lot of money. GAO thought it was serious enough to initiate this study on its own. That is not unheard of , but it is definitely not the norm.
This report provides a window into how the government has been funding the military. The report points out that staring with September 2001, funding for military operations in support of GWOT was not part of regular budgeting but, rather, came through "emergency funding essentially outside of the annual budget process." Most of this emergency money came through supplemental appropriations, separate from DOD’s annual appropriation.
GAO says this process must stop, that there must be a full discussion about funding that includes Congress:
As a result of DOD’s new GWOT funding guidance, the line between what has historically been requested as emergency funding and what has historically been requested as part of DOD’s baseline budget costs has been blurred.
Without a clear definition of the “longer war against terror” and clearer distinctions between what constitutes incremental versus base costs, decision makers lack an integrated picture and the ability to set priorities and make trade-offs between the costs of ongoing operations, such as Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, and DOD’s long-term funding needs.
If the administration believes that the nature of the defense challenge facing the United States has changed such that we are engaged in a long-term conflict, the implications — for example, in terms of force structure, investment priorities, and long term versus short-term costs — should be the focus of discussion with the Congress.
Continuing to fund the GWOT through emergency funding requests reduces transparency and avoids the necessary reexamination and discussion of defense commitments and the trade-offs among funding needs that may be required.
Some steps have been taken in this direction, as a result of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act:
In his fiscal year 2008 budget, the President included a request for GWOT funding in the budget submission for the first time since September 2001. This action was consistent with a requirement in section 1008 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 which required the President’s future budget submissions after fiscal year 2007 to include a request for the appropriation of funds for ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq for that fiscal year, an estimate of all funds expected to be required in that fiscal year for such operations, and a detailed justification of the funds requested.
The Empire Signing Statements Back
This is interesting, given the signing statement for the legislation that essentially said that maybe the administration would abide by the law and maybe it wouldn't:
Several provisions of the Act call for executive branch officials to submit to the Congress recommendations for legislation, or purport to regulate the manner in which the President formulates recommendations to the Congress for legislation. . . The executive branch shall construe these provisions in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to recommend for the consideration of the Congress such measures as the President deems necessary and expedient.
The executive branch shall construe sections 914 and 1512 of the Act, which purport to make consultation with specified Members of Congress a precondition to the execution of the law, as calling for but not mandating such consultation, as is consistent with the Constitution's provisions concerning the separate powers of the Congress to legislate and the President to execute the laws. . . .
A number of provisions in the Act call for the executive branch to furnish information to the Congress or other entities on various subjects. . . . The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties.
So is it any surprise that when the FY2008 GWOT funding request of $141.7 billion was submitted, it came as part of the DOD’s annual budget request, but was requested as emergency funding.
The GWOT funding request contained the caveat that it was based upon the department’s best estimate of war funding needs as of February 2007 and, if circumstances warranted, the department would seek to amend the request as appropriate.
GAO Presses on Regardless - Because GAO is About Accountability . .. Thank Goodness
GAO has been on DOD for years about problems with its requests and with their reliability. The report includes a list of those GAO reports for your edification. Here GAO says:
Factors affecting the reliability of DOD’s reported costs include long-standing deficiencies in hundreds of nonintegrated financial management systems requiring manual entry of some data in multiple systems, and the lack of a systematic process to ensure that data are correctly entered into those systems. DOD’s efforts to improve weaknesses include establishing additional procedures for analyzing and validating GWOT cost data, and establishing a new steering group.
Now with the GWOT and the longer war against terror, both needing funding, GAO concludes that DOD has created a situation that makes it hard to tell what the financial situation is:
Changes in DOD’s GWOT funding guidance have resulted in billions of dollars being added to GWOT funding requests, for what DOD calls the “longer war against terror,” making it difficult to distinguish between incremental costs to support specific contingency operations and longer term costs typically associated with DOD’s base budget. Historically, emergency funding requests have generally been used to support the unexpected incremental costs of contingency operations, but usually for a limited time. Previous administrations have then moved these costs into the base budget. Contrary to this historical practice, in October 2006, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a memo that expanded the ground rules for DOD’s GWOT requests, allowing for the inclusion of costs for what DOD calls the “longer war against terror.” This inclusion blurred the lines between incremental costs and longer-term costs that have historically been requested as part of the base budget, as discussed below.
More on the problems and how GAO has been trying to get DOD to get control over these funding problems:
In previous work, we encouraged DOD to include known or likely projected costs of ongoing operations in its base budget requests. As early as 1994, we stated our expectation that any emergency supplemental funding requests would only be used to cover the initial costs of a contingency operation in its first fiscal year. Further, if the operation continued into a new fiscal year, and if DOD had time within the budget and legislative cycle, DOD would build the expected costs of the operation into its base budget and allow Congress to expressly authorize and appropriate funds for its continuation. In 2004 and 2006, we repeated our suggestion that once an operation reaches a known level of effort and cost are more predictable, more funding should be built into the base budget. Contrary to historical precedent and our suggestions, current administration policy dictates that the costs of ongoing military operations in support of GWOT, such as Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, should be requested as emergency funding, and since September 2001 this has been the practice.
This is about serious money and the potential for unaccountable costs, because DOD has now created long supply timelines that make it possible to hide and confuse.
The fiscal year 2008 GWOT funding request for DOD also included funding for replacement aircraft that will not be available for years. For example, in the fiscal year 2008 GWOT request, DOD requested $230 million for an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Joint Strike Fighter funding requested was to support the replacement of an F-16 Falcon lost during combat operations.
However, the replacement aircraft will not be available to support the current operations in the coming fiscal year, and will likely not be available for several years. The request also included funding for five CV-22 Vertical Lift Aircraft, the Air Force’s variant of the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. These aircraft are intended to replace MH-53 Pave Low helicopters that are used to support special operations. Initial operational capability for the CV-22 is not scheduled until fiscal year 2009 and will not be immediately available for operational deployments.
Although DOD has linked funding for these aircraft to recapitalization, officials stated that the department is only accelerating previously planned procurements and the funding is not intended for additional procurements. Also, funding for these systems remains as known requirements in current and future base budget documents. As a planned procurement and as-yet unfielded aircraft, it is unclear how these aircraft qualify as an urgent requirement and therefore, why they are included in the fiscal year 2008 GWOT request for DOD.
I like that last sentence: "As a planned procurement and as-yet unfielded aircraft, it is unclear how these aircraft qualify as an urgent requirement and therefore, why they are included in the fiscal year 2008 GWOT request for DOD." Sarcasm and calling them on it all wrapped up in a GAO report and measured language.
No wonder GAO decided it had to speak out.
The report is Global War on Terrorism: DOD Needs to Take Action to Encourage Fiscal Discipline and Optimize the Use of Tools Intended to Improve GWOT Cost Reporting GAO-08-68, November 6, 2007
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