AUSA President to Congress: “Complete action on the 2007 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill immediately”

AUSA President Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA, Ret., sent a letter to key lawmakers last week urging that they complete work on the fiscal 2007 emergency supplemental spending bill as soon as possible.

The letter said in part, “Failure to pass the bill before the end of April will cause major disruptions as the military services will be forced to reprogram funds from fourth quarter fiscal 2007 money to pay for ongoing operations.”

The day after Gen. Sullivan’s letter, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent his own letter to Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va, informing him that the Pentagon would be sending Congress a request to shift $1.6 billion -- $800 million from both the Navy's and Air Force's military personnel accounts -- to the Army's operation and maintenance account to cover the costs of ongoing military operations in Iraq.

The letter said that the current troop surge in Iraq has resulted in "higher than projected" contingency costs, adding that "the impact of a delayed Spring Supplemental is occurring earlier and is greater in magnitude."

"While some have suggested that the Army can operate this year until July with existing resources and authorities, in reality there are significant limits, costs and disruptions associated with the budgetary maneuvers necessary to continue Army operations...," Secretary Gates said in the letter. He was referring to a recent Congressional Research Service report concluding that the Army could continue wartime initiatives through "most of July" in the absence of a new war supplemental spending bill.

"The technical and limited ability of the Department to transfer funds should not create a sense of complacency regarding the pressing need for the supplemental," Gates asserted.

According to the Secretary Gates, if a new supplemental is not enacted by mid-May, the Army will have to consider a further extension of currently deployed troops, among other actions. He also outlined other specific steps the Army will soon be forced to take if the supplemental is not enacted soon. They include:

0 Reducing Army quality of life initiatives including routine upgrade of barracks and other facilities;

0 Reducing the repair and maintenance of equipment necessary for deployment training; and,

0 Curtailing the training of Army Guard and Reserve units within the United States, reducing their readiness levels.

Meanwhile, President Bush and the Democratic leadership in Congress continue their stand-off over troop withdrawal language contained in the supplemental. As the bill heads into conference, the Democratic leadership will meet with President Bush this week to discuss their differences.

Please send a letter to your elected representative to let them know how critical the supplemental is to the Army. Click on “Contact Congress” then after “Elected Officials” type your Zip Code and scroll down to “Pass the 2007 Emergency Supplemental Bill Now”.



AUSA on the Hill

AUSA Vice President for Education LTG Ted Stroup, USA Ret., and Director of Government Affairs, Bill Loper, met with Doug Matties, military legislative assistant to Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., to discuss ways that AUSA can work with Rep. Boyda to help keep the Army properly equipped and ready.

LTG Stroup gave Mr. Matties a set of AUSA publications that deal with a wide range of Army issues. He also pledged AUSA's help to Rep. Boyda's office in their efforts to support legislation that will have a positive impact on the Army and is soldiers and families.

Rep. Boyda is a member of the Armed Services Committee and serves the Kansas district that includes Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth.


Pentagon Outlines New Deployment Policy

Active Army units now in Afghanistan and Iraq, including headquarters units and transition training teams, and those heading there will deploy for 15 months and will return to home stations for not less than 12 months.

In a Pentagon press conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step that will be kept in place only until we can shift with confidence to the 12-month deployments and 12 months at home, and ultimately to the rotation goal for Army active-duty forces of 12 months deployed and 24 months at home.” Marine Corps seven-month deployments will continue.

The soldiers will also be paid an additional $1,000 per month on the extended tours. The Army will be sending “Tiger Teams” to the affected units’ installations to work with families.

Secretary Gates said the change would allow commanders in Iraq to keep American force levels at about 160,000 soldiers and Marines.

The announcement followed the Army’s confirmation that four National Guard brigade combat teams that have been previously deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq over the last four years will begin deploying in December for a yearlong mobilization.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said in a statement, “This new policy will be an additional burden to an already overstretched Army. I think this will have a chilling effect on recruiting, retention and readiness. We also must not underestimate the enormous negative impact this will have on Army families.”

The following day at a joint hearing on Defense Department and Veterans Affairs disability ratings procedures, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., expressed his concern over the three-month extension of deployments on the All-Volunteer Force. “Do we have checkpoints to monitor” the impact of the longer deployments.

Sen. Warner also wanted to know if the longer deployments were expected when President Bush announced in January that he was sending an additional 28,000 soldiers and Marines to Iraq to secure Baghdad and al Anbar Province.

The plans for the longer deployments “were developed over the last couple of weeks,” Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren said. “It’s a judgment call” on whether the extensions will affect recruiting and retention.

That thought was echoed at a Pentagon press conference April 12 by LTG James Lovelace, the Army’s chief operations officer. “”We entered into a little bit of uncharted territory here. And that’s why all the questions about concerns. Are there concerns? You bet, as we all have sons and daughters, friends and relatives … who are serving overseas.”

At the press conference Secretary Gates said, “I think what this recognizes, though, is that our forces are stretched. There’s no question about that. And it is an attempt, above all, to provide – instead of dribbling out these notifications to units sort of just in time when they-re to deploy – what we’re trying to do here is provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families.”


Independent Review Group Releases Interim Report on Walter Reed

Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ Independent Review Group called for closing Walter Reed Army Medical Center as quickly as possible in the wake of news accounts and its own investigation of poor care for 700 out patients in what one of the co-chairman termed a “perfect storm” of failed leadership, flawed policies and continuing flow of casualties that produced the “large number of soldiers who go into the status of hold or hold over.”

In releasing its preliminary report April 11, John Marsh, a former secretary of the Army and co-chairman, said, “As a father who had a severely wounded son, I can empathize” with the families of the injured and wounded soldiers. “We’re going to need the help and support of the other services, Department of Defense, Office of management and Budget and OPM [Office of Personnel Management] and more importantly the Congress of the United States.”

At least three Senate committees and subcommittees held hearings on conditions at Walter Reed and other military and veterans’ hospitals and clinics, the different disability rating processes of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and the perceptions of guardsmen and reservists that a caste system exists in the military health care system.

The group called for speeding up the environmental review of the grounds of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., so the Walter Reed Military Medical Center could be built there and providing $2 billion to build it and a new community hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va.

“It needs to be built, and it needs to be built as quickly as possible,” said John J.H. Schwartz, a physician and former Republican congressman from Michigan. “The environmental impact study should be waived.”

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support the day before, Philip W. Grone, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Management, said that to close the existing facility and build the new ones at Bethesda and Belvoir, the Congress needed to moved quickly on passing the supplemental spending bill.

The bill includes $3 billion the department needs to keep the Base Realignment and Closure on track to meet the congressionally-set deadline of having all actions completed by mid-September 2011. Two billion dollars involve Army projects.

Acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren told a joint hearing of the Senate Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs Committee April 11, “We are studying ways that we can advance the calendar” for base realignment and closure in the National Capital Region.”

At that hearing, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., added, “I strongly support accelerating the funding of the new Walter Reed and the facility at Fort Belvoir.” He and a number of other senators have said they do not want to see the Army facility closed until the other two facilities are up and running.

The group seemed to be in alignment with that position and recommended investing millions into short-term infrastructure fixes at Walter Reed and to cover the shortages of nurses at the facility and other medical and administrative personnel, including case managers. It also called for an exemption to the privatizing policies at military medical facilities.

Speaking to the Defense Health Board meeting at Walter Reed where the preliminary report was unveiled, Togo West, also a former secretary of the Army and a group co-chairman, said Walter Reed’s “highly prized reputation does not go unchallenged” and the group found it “virtually incomprehensible” regarding the living conditions for these soldiers and the cumbersome bureaucracy that was in place on processing their disability cases.

“We have reason to believe the problems are systemic” in terms of the disability rating system, Marsh said.

As for case managers, Jim Bacchus, a group member and former Democratic congressman from Florida, said, “We want case management to take the lead for the patient, The Reserve and Guard, on the one hand, should be treated equally.”

Case management would also have the patient treated in parallel rather than serially for injuries and through rehabilitation.

“Part of the issue is, this nation is at war, and we’re taking significant casualties. The nation needs to realize we’re at war,” Lt. Gen. Charles Roadman, USAF, Ret., a panel member and former Air Force surgeon general, said.

He added that the group distinguished between rehabilitation medicine and acute care medicine and the civilian approach to rehabilitation medicine did not necessarily apply to veterans of Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. “What we have in the civilian sector is geriatric. …There is a learning curve here for us” because these veterans are much younger and also suffering more devastating injuries, including Traumatic Brain Injury that might surface months after the soldier was involved in improvised explosive device attack.

The final report will be submitted to the Secretary of Defense this week.