A New Year and a New Congress
The 110th Congress convened yesterday. The new Democratic leadership’s agenda for the first 100 hours will deal mostly with domestic issues; however, there are other items they will take up in the next few weeks. Some of these include:

Nine spending bills left over from the 109th Congress!
The Chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., announced that they plan to adopt a continuing resolution for the balance of the year to address the unfinished appropriations bills. That means that the remaining fiscal 2007 appropriations would be kept at the 2006 funding levels until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

While this does not affect the fiscal 2007 defense appropriations or authorization bills (they were passed by the 109th Congress and signed into law) it will have a huge effect on the fiscal 2007 military construction bill which is one of the nine unfinished bills.

Senior military leaders including Army Secretary Francis Harvey and Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker are calling for lawmakers to add billions of dollars to the long-term continuing resolution and have warned that a continuing resolution without added funds to cover necessary base-closure costs and pay for military construction and quality of life programs will have dire consequences for the services.

A letter to lawmakers from Secretary Harvey and Gen. Schoomaker said, “Military construction and quality of life initiatives constitute large, critical portions of [the Army’s national security] plan. Yet, the limitations imposed by the continuing resolution are already causing our plan to fray, and it is likely to unravel completely should we go through the entire fiscal year under a CR.”

The letter continued, “Our force rotation plan to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as our overall readiness posture, relies on completing these conversions to the Army modular force on time. We have recruited and retained the soldiers, purchased individual protection equipment and established a training plan, but now we are faced with the real possibility of not having facilities ready for training, maintenance, communication and command activities.”

Rep. John Murtha, Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has said that lawmakers would try to add the money for the shortfall, which he said was about $5 billion.

While that is encouraging, it must be accomplished immediately. AUSA President Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA, Ret., sent a letter to House and Senate Appropriations Committee leadership urging that they make up the shortfall as soon as possible. “Freezing military construction at FY 2006 levels could cause termination of building projects with concomitant contract terminations fees and not allow initiation of planned and needed military construction. In a time of war as well as Army transformation, give the Army leadership the fiscal tools it needs to complete planned and ongoing initiatives,” the letter stated.

You can add your voice to ours. Go to the AUSA website, www.ausa.org, click on “Contact Congress”, type in your zip code beside “Elected Officials”, and scroll down to “Fix the Military Construction Shortfall”.

Iraq
Look for all issues related to Iraq to be high on Congress’ agenda. The Senate leadership has indicated that they plan to hold at least 13 hearings on Iraq over the next three weeks. The hearings will be held by committees that include Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Intelligence, Homeland Security and Judiciary.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have agreed to testify and invitations have been sent out to former administration officials, academics and military and Iraqi experts.

The House Armed Services Committee will hold its first hearing on Iraq next week to discuss the way forward.

Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill
Another supplemental spending request is on the horizon and is expected to be in the $100 billion range. The new Democratic leadership is already questioning some items contained in the request and has indicated its unwillingness to support the request without intense oversight.

A congressional aide to a senior member of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee said, “The old Congress might have rolled over on this” but with the new Democratic leadership “there is going to be a very different view on this from our side. We may reject it.”

The draft supplemental would provide:

--$41.5 billion for ongoing operations
--$26.7 billion for repair and replacement of damaged equipment
--$10 billion for force protection
--$9.75 billion for Iraq and Afghan security forces
--$2.7 billion to fund military intelligence
--$2.5 billion for defeating Individual Explosive Devices (IEDs)
--$3.7 billion to create two more Army brigade combat teams and 3 Marine battalions

President’s Fiscal 2008 Budget
The President’s budget request will reach Capitol Hill in early February. That will spawn a whole rash of oversight hearings as military leaders present testimony on the proposal.

Busy days are ahead and the Newsletter will keep you informed!