The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) continues to review the Defense Department’s reprogramming actions, and in their most recent letter to the Pentagon Comptroller calls out the Air Force for trying to reduce programming funds Congress added to reflect “important congressional priorities.”
The committee is poring over some $9 billion in reprogramming requests across multiple appropriations over a number of fiscal years. May 29, the committee approved the realignment of $2.6 billion in seven requests.
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| C-130 Hercules Photo: USAF |
The Air Force and DoD may not see the congressional funds as meeting important requirements and thus available to support other defense priorities, the committee made their strong disagreement clear:
“The committee does not share that position and believes the Department would be foolish to think it could so blatantly disregard both congressional priorities and prerogatives in determining funding levels for programs supporting national defense,” the June 21 letter to Robert Hale said.
HASC, therefore, denied three programming requests totaling $31.8 million, and left this strong warning: “The committee expects that future reprogramming requests should not attempt a similar tactic of brazenly disregarding the role of Congress in determining sufficient levels of funding for programs.”
Additionally, HASC denied a $33 million reprogramming request to reduce funds originally added by Congress that were to be used for Center Wing Box replacements for the C-130H. The committee said the Secretary of the Air Force has not taken sufficient initiative to modernize and sustain the C-130H fleet, most of which is in the Air Force reserve.