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Navy, AF money keeps Army running until July

The Army will be able to meet its next military and civilian payroll and all defense operations will continue full-bore, thanks to last-minute congressional moves to let the Pentagon shift Navy and Air Force personnel and operations funds into the Army and other defense accounts, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Officials had announced May 28 that unless Congress approved by June 9 its remaining emergency supplemental war funding request of $102.1 billion — or, at least, $9.7 billion as a stopgap — the Army would not be able to meet its payroll after June 15.

On Wednesday, Congress gave permission to reprogram $1.6 billion into the operations and maintenance accounts of the Army and other agencies, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

That came on the heels of congressional approval to reprogram $5.7 billion into military personnel accounts to avert the impending Army payroll shortfall, said Army Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Pentagon spokesman.

“We will now be able to pay our troops until the end of July,” Morrell said. “And operations and maintenance accounts will remain solvent until mid-July.”

Morrell said the approvals “bought us a little additional time. But we still face a very grave situation if we don’t get our full supplemental funding.”

Officials said the shortfall developed when the Pentagon’s initial $178 billion war supplemental request was only partially funded last fall, forcing it to pay for war costs this spring and summer out of normal operations and maintenance accounts funded by the baseline $471 billion fiscal-year budget.

The Pentagon’s initial $9.7 billion transfer request would have drawn $5.7 billion from the military personnel accounts of the Navy and Air Force and, separately, $4 billion from those services’ operations and maintenance accounts and the Department of Defense Working Capital Fund, for transfer to the Army and U.S. Special Operations Command operations and maintenance accounts.

But the Pentagon came up $2.4 billion short in stopgap funding. The additional money would have allowed the Pentagon to continue operating past mid-July, Morrell said.

Defense officials previously said that if Congress does not pass the entire $108.1 billion supplemental request by mid-July, all remaining military personnel and operations funding will be exhausted by late July, leaving the department unable to meet both military and civilian payroll.

Morrell said details on what will happen if the supplement continues to sit in limbo won’t be known until June 30.

Earlier this week, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England sent out a memo asking all military departments and agencies to begin planning for a possible shutdown and determine which civilian personnel would have to continue working in that event, Morrell said. Responses are due back to England no later than June 30.

Should funding run out, service members and certain “essential” civilian personnel, including those serving in the war zones, would continue to serve without pay. Nonessential civilian employees would be laid off per applicable personnel rules, the Pentagon earlier said.

No furlough notices have yet been prepared, Morrell said.

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