Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Congress: Look in the Mirror

by Robert G. Gard [contact information]

Published by Defense News on April 1, 2007

It is interesting, but frustrating, to watch Congress leap on the bandwagon to hurl moral thunderbolts at the military for dilapidated facilities and inadequate support at U.S. installations for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, in an op-ed in the March 11 Washington Post, even went so far as to credit Congress with uncovering Walter Reed's "warehousing instead of rehabilitating wounded soldiers." All this appears hypocritical to installation commanders and their subordinates who are responsible for allocating insufficient funds to provide for members of their military communities, including wounded and injured soldiers. They can't speak out, but I can.

As the name implies, the defense budget's operations and maintenance (O&M) account includes the funding that installation commanders use to repair buildings and pay civilians to provide essential support services, including helping soldiers make their way through the labyrinths of appointments and administrative processing.

Yet it is that same O&M account that is the most vulnerable source for members of Congress wishing to divert defense funds to their various pet projects. These "bridges to no-where" and other earmarked projects that bring home the bacon to their districts and states are valuable tools for ensuring their re-elections.

How common is this practice? According to a Feb. 28 statement by Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, members of Congress from both parties included over 2,800 earmarks in the fiscal 2006 defense budget worth an estimated $11.2 billion for their special projects. And this is only a portion of the total amount earmarked last year.

Among other problems created by this practice of earmarking is depriving military installations of funding necessary to hire a sufficient number of essential civilian support personnel and to maintain facilities. For example, there were reports last year of Army installations so short of O&M funds that they ran out of money to pay their utility bills.

As a former commander of a major Army installation, I had to deal with shortages of O&M funding; so I can understand why building maintenance is deferred in order to meet more urgent needs.

While I am not privy to the specifics of the situation at Walter Reed, it would not be surprising if a shortage of O&M funding contributed to the well-publicized condition of Building 18. No doubt other commanders of military installations throughout the United States who faced similar situations found it necessary to defer building maintenance.

A related problem faced by installation commanders experiencing shortfalls in O&M funding is an inability to hire enough civilians to perform essential administrative and logistical support functions.

This results in the need to place soldiers on special duty to fill these positions. This diverts soldiers from their units, prevents training them in their military specialties and weakens unit readiness.

The only other option would be an overload resulting in lengthy delays, an impractical solution when there are deadlines.

It is difficult to believe that Congress is, or has been, unaware at least in general terms of the impact of financing their earmarks by raiding the defense O&M accounts. During a March 7 interview on "The News Hour With Jim Lehrer," a recent interview, Sen. Lindsey Graham apparently admitted as much, saying that "Congress is not blameless" in the problems being faced by our wounded and injured soldiers.

It might be sobering, even therapeutic, for members of the Congress to visit U.S. military installations to inquire about the adequacy of O&M funds available to the commanders, to ask how many soldiers are on special duty performing installation support tasks, and to inspect the status of facilities, including family housing, for which maintenance had to be deferred.

Congress currently is considering the 2007 Supplemental Appropriations bill. Despite Congress' insistence that the Department of Defense cease including in these "emergency" supplemental items unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is evident that this bill is laden with earmarks.

If past is prologue, it is highly doubtful that our legislators have spent anywhere near as much time ensuring the adequacy of O&M finding for installation commanders as they have in preparing their earmark projects and obtaining funding for them.

It's probably too much to expect Congress will resist tapping O&M funds for their own pet projects; but at a minimum, they should be willing to ensure that sufficient O&M funds are available to installation commanders in the future to take care of wounded and injured soldiers, as well as other service members and their families.