Rep. Mac Thornberry said Wednesday the Pentagon may need new flexibility to spend funding past the end of the fiscal year because Congress is more than three months late in passing an annual budget.
The House Armed Services chairman said he is concerned the delay in funding the government for this fiscal year could mean the Pentagon will not have time to spend operations and maintenance funding for aircraft, ships, and training before the money expires at the end of September.
The Pentagon “will receive a large percentage of their funding without much time left … you either have the choice of spending a lot of stuff fast or not spending it,” Thornberry said. “So, I think we need to work with appropriators and others to figure out in this situation how to give them some more flexibility.”
Armed Services staff have been in contact with the Pentagon about the possibility, he said.
The operations and maintenance account could end up with about $190 million, according to the Trump administration’s request. But any final funding amounts for the military remain up in the air as lawmakers wrangle over a 2018 omnibus spending bill and immigration reform.
Different buckets of Pentagon funding have deadlines attached and the O&M account money must be spent in the same fiscal year that it is appropriated by Congress.
“I’m concerned that our maintenance and other readiness problems are so severe that we can’t afford to let money just set there or to spend it foolishly,” Thornberry said.
Congress failed to pass an annual budget at the end of September and has instead passed three stopgap continuing resolutions. Some lawmakers now say a fourth stopgap measure is likely when the current one expires Jan. 19.
