According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Pentagon already has taken $1.6 billion from the Air Force and Navy to turn over to the Army. The Air Force share is around $880 million, which came out of personnel accounts and which Air Force leaders believe will be coming back by the end of the summer. All hinges on the still embattled war supplemental funding bill. However, Gates also told the Senate Appropriations defense panel last week that DOD would probably reprogram more funds “in a few days” to sustain the Army for another week. He concluded that if the Pentagon “pulled out all the stops, used everything possible available to us, we could probably fund the war into July, but I would tell you, the impact on the Department of Defense in terms of disruption and canceled contracts and programs would be huge if we had to do that.”
House and Senate lawmakers say they’re hopeful Congress will pass a defense appropriations bill in the coming weeks to avoid a repeat of last fall’s government shutdown, with only having a handful of working days remaining before the Jan. 30 deadline. Yet legislations still have to release a compromise version of defense spending legislation, which will have to…
