By Emelie Rutherford
Facing the possibility of a government shutdown tomorrow, a top Pentagon official provided details yesterday on how the military workforce would operate without a budget.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn released the message to Department of Defense (DoD) workforce as the outlook for how the Pentagon will function after a short-term spending bill expires at midnight tonight became murkier yesterday. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) suggested in a mid-day statement President Barack Obama would veto a defense-spending bill the House passed yesterday, via a mainly party-line 247-181 vote. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also called the House legislation a “non-starter.”
Backed by Republicans who control the chamber, the House measure is a one-week continuing resolution (CR) funding most of the government near fiscal year 2010 levels, along with a full-blown $515.8 billion FY ’11 defense appropriations bill that is 1.5 percent larger than FY ’10 levels.
Obama objects to it because he wants House Republicans and Senate Democrats to agree on a budget for all of the government for the rest of FY ’11, which ends Sept. 30.
“The administration will continue to work with the Congress to arrive at a compromise that will fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year in a way that does not undermine future growth and job creation and that averts a costly government shutdown,” the OMB said in a state of administration policy.
Lynn, in his message to the DoD workforce, reiterated that efforts “that are essential to safety, protection of human life, and protection of our national security, are ‘excepted’ from shutting down,” including operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Japan.
Civilian personnel will be told today whether their work falls into excepted or non-excepted status, and contractors will learn on Monday, he said.
“Generally, contractors performing work on contracts funded prior to a shutdown, whether supporting excepted activities or not, may continue working and will be paid out of the obligated funds, subject to further direction from the contracting officer,” Lynn wrote. “New contracts, or increases in funding of existing contracts, needed to support excepted activities may be entered into during the period of a shutdown, but payments under such contracts cannot be made until Congress provides additional funding.”
Reid and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) returned to the White House yesterday for budget negotiations. They told reporters yesterday afternoon, in the White House driveway, that they remained at odds.
Boehner–who repeatedly called the one-week CR the House passed yesterday a “responsible troop-funding bill”–said he and Reid had “no agreement on a number” for the size of the overall federal budget and “no agreement on the policy issues that are contained with this.”
Reid said earlier in the day yesterday he was not optimistic the two sides could reach an agreement on clashes over abortion-related and environmental policy. He and Boehner planned to return to the White House for further talks last night, after press time.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters yesterday afternoon one of the sticking points in negotiations between the Democrats and Republicans is defense funding.
“What we have left now is a debate about a relatively small number (of spending cuts) and how you compose those cuts,” he said, citing four examples: Head Start, highway, and medical-research spending, along with “funding that the Pentagon has deemed wasteful and unnecessary.”
“When we talk about getting the composition of the numbers, those are really the choices on the table,” Carney said.
The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC), in a now-moot bill unveiled last month, called for a $513.6 billion defense budget; that would cut more from Obama’s request than the $515.8 billion Pentagon appropriations bill attached to the CR the House passed yesterday.
The House-passed measure does not fund a controversial weapon system that Boehner supports and Obama doesn’t: the alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Boehner, asked by reporters why he didn’t support a basic short-term CR to keep the government running in the immediate future, cited House Republicans’ pledge to post new legislation on the Web three days before considering it.
The House and Senate will be in session today.