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| Defense Secretary Robert Gates pauses during a news conference at the Pentagon on Nov. 15. Haraz N. Ghanbari |
Pentagon is left scrambling to pay for war
Secretary Robert Gates says Congress's failure to fund war operations means furloughs at US bases are likely.
By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the November 19, 2007 edition
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Washington - Congress's failure last week to agree whether and how to fund the war puts the onus on the Pentagon, at least for now, to find a way to cover expenses in Iraq, potentially forcing the Defense Department to close dozens of domestic military bases and imperil the livelihoods of tens of thousands of defense workers.
The congressional inaction may trigger Secretary Robert Gates to carry out his threat last week to furlough as many as 200,000 civil servants and defense contractors this winter, raising the stakes for Democratic lawmakers determined to tie war funding to a drawdown of US troops from Iraq.
Before lawmakers left town Friday for their Thanksgiving recess, they did approve the Pentagon's $470 billion base budget, but not a supplemental funding request to pay for war operations. Democrats don't want to fund that $189 billion defense request from President Bush unless the money is tied to deadlines, or at least goals, to bring the bulk of troops home from Iraq by the end of 2008.
One Democratic measure, to provide $50 billion for war operations as long as the Pentagon aims to all but finish the redeployment of troops by December 2008, failed in the Senate on Friday. Another measure backed by Republicans, to provide $70 billion with no such deadline language, also failed, leaving the Pentagon uncertain about how to pay for the next several months of operations in Iraq.
That leaves the Pentagon with no choice, according to Secretary Gates, who said bluntly last week that the furloughs would be "the least undesirable" of the limited options if it runs out of money. The Defense Department would begin laying off nonuniformed defense workers, effectively shutting down all Army bases by February, followed by at least some Marine bases a month later.
The urgency stems from federal laws that require workers to be notified 60 days in advance that they might be furloughed in another month.
Though Gates is considered one of the least partisan members of the Bush Cabinet, some see his strategy as politically shrewd. It may well force congressional Democrats to back away, at least for now, from their strategy to tie war funding to a troop-withdrawal deadline, says Loren Thompson, a senior analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank near Washington. Otherwise, Democrats could be seen as not supporting troops in the field, even though the furloughs would not affect troops directly at first.
"If this is yet another cat-and-mouse game over war funding, people should be clear that Gates is the cat, because in the end the Democratic mice are not going to be able to have their way," he says.
At the Pentagon Thursday, Gates complained that an uncertain funding stream at best creates busy work for defense planners – and at worst negatively affects the troops.
