Army chief says tardiness passing spending bills is costly

Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker took a swipe at Congress Tuesday, telling lawmakers that their inability to pass annual and supplemental appropriations on time has forced the service to siphon money from its regular programs to pay for wartime operations for the last two years.

The Army received $36 billion out of the recently passed supplemental appropriations bill just days ago, weeks after the service actually needed it to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he told the House Armed Services Committee.

The funding delay, coupled with reductions in what the Army requested for fiscal 2006 emergency funds to repair or replace thousands of pieces of equipment, has frustrated Army officials, who have scrapped travel and other expenses to come up with money to cover urgent needs.

"We have the capacity to do it," Schoomaker said about overcoming the massive equipment challenge. "If we have the money in time, and the money in sufficient numbers, we will get ahead of this."

Indeed, the Army's many depots are not running at full capacity, averaging only two out of four possible daily shifts. Pennsylvania's Letterkenny Army Depot, for instance, is operating at only two-thirds its potential operational hours and has a backlog of 1,000 Humvees in need of repair.

Marine Corps depots are running on average 1.7 shifts a day, Marine Commandant Michael Hagee said.

The Army estimates it will need $17.1 billion to reset ground equipment and helicopters in fiscal 2007, including $4.9 billion in equipment expenses that was deferred this year. After that, Schoomaker said his heavily deployed force will need between $12 billion and $13 billion annually to repair and replace worn-out equipment.

Meanwhile, the Marines will need $11.9 billion in fiscal 2007 supplemental funding to reset its own equipment -- more than half the Corps' annual base budget. Hagee did not estimate his force's reset needs after fiscal 2007, but warned that it often takes two to three years after money is appropriated to fully repair the equipment.

Schoomaker cautioned lawmakers not to eat into the service's modernization accounts to pay for wartime needs, signaling he would not tolerate major cuts to its prized program, the $160 billion Future Combat Systems.

Indeed, defense sources have indicated that the Army, expecting cuts to FCS, is already weighing several options to scale back the cost of the high-tech program.

Schoomaker, who did not comment on possible Army cuts, told the committee that fielding FCS will require fewer troops, thus allowing the service to reduce burgeoning personnel costs.

"We will not escape the tyranny of rising manpower costs without modernization," he told the panel.

The four-star general warned that the Army and Congress cannot shortchange the Army as was done during the 1990s, leading to a $56 billion shortfall in the service's equipment accounts when the war began in Iraq in 2003.