Santa Clara County Republican Party of Silicon Valley | Sec. Gates: War Funding Uncertainty "Will Have Many Real Consequences"

Defense Secretary Robert Gates Urges Congress To Pass War Funding Bill,
Says Failure To Do So "Will Have Many Real Consequences For Our Men And Women In Uniform"

"I … strongly urged the Congress to pass a global war on terror funding bill that the President would sign. With the passage of the Defense Appropriations Act, there is a misperception that this department can continue funding our troops in the field for an indefinite period of time through accounting maneuvers, that we can shuffle money around the department. This is a serious misconception. … I make these comments solely as the person charged by the President and the Congress with administering the Department of Defense. The high degree of [uncertainty] on funding for the war is immensely complicating this task and will have many real consequences for this department and for our men and women in uniform." – Defense Secretary Robert Gates, 11/15/07

Defense Secretary Robert Gates: "The fact is, the department has significantly less funding flexibility than it had last spring."
"In the fall of 2006, Congress provided us with a bridge fund of $70 billion until passage of the full war supplemental. The full supplemental did not pass Congress until late May. This fall, the department has been operating under a continuing resolution. Now that the regular appropriations bill has been enacted, we are left with no bridge fund and only our base budget to support normal war operations. Further, Congress has provided very limited flexibility to deal with this funding shortage." (Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Press Briefing, The Pentagon, 11/15/07)

· "We can only move a total of $3.7 billion under general transfer authority, which only amounts to a little over one week's worth of war expenses."

· "All this leaves the department only with undesirable options to continue operations in the absence of a bridge fund." "The path we believe is least undesirable fiscally and militarily would involve the following:"

"The military would cease operations at all Army bases by mid-February next year." "This would result in the furloughing of about 100,000 government employees and a like number of contractor employees at Army bases. These layoffs would have a cascading effect on depots and procurements."

"By law, we're required to notify certain union employees 60 days in advance, so appropriate notices would have to go out starting in mid-December."

· "If the Congress does not provide bridge funding this week on a bill that the President will sign, and given the uncertainty of future action in December, by the end of this week, as a prudent manager, I will be obliged to take a series of anticipatory steps." "First, submit an urgent reprogramming request to the Congress. And second, direct the Army and Marine Corps to develop a plan to furlough employees, terminate contracts and prepare bases for reduced operations."

Sec. Gates: "It seems to me that there ought to be some deference to those who are running the war, the generals, in terms of the … pace at which this drawdown should take place, and based on the conditions on the ground." "[I]nitially the President was asked to announce that drawdowns would begin in our troops. Then he was asked to set a date for when the drawdowns would begin. Then he was asked to give a timetable for the drawdowns, and then he was asked to change the mission of the troops. The President has moved in all four of these areas. … So the issue now really is about pacing, how fast do you change the mission, how fast do you draw down the troops. And what I told members of Congress yesterday is, for those who allege that the views of the generals were not sufficiently taken into account at the front end of the war, now you have a recommendation from the commander in the field, from the commander of CENTCOM and from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, unanimous, on what makes sense in terms of pacing, so that we don't put at risk the gains we've already made…"

· However one feels about how we got to this point, the reality is, we have had some significant success due to the efforts of our men and women in uniform… We don't want to sacrifice that success." "[A]nd so how do we get the next phase of this conflict right, because the consequences of getting it wrong are potentially very high."