Can the Pentagon break its addiction to supplementals?

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 July 2009
• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Published date: 01 July 2009
• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

* The day of reckoning has arrived at the Pentagon. This Gotterdammerung--also known as the end of supplemental budgets--is being met with a mix of anxiety and resignation. Everyone knew they would not last forever but were somehow still hoping for a miracle.

The 2011 defense budget will end the practice of funding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by supplemental appropriations requests, which are separate from the department's annual "base" budget. Between 2001 and 2010, the Pentagon will have received more than a trillion dollars outside the normal budget process. The funds pay not just for war operations but also personnel costs and procurement of new equipment.

Technically, it is not free money, but it sort of feels like it.

Even before the Obama administration decided to stop funding war costs outside the normal budget process, critics on Capitol Hill had vociferously opposed it. Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., spoke about the "corrosive" impact of the over-reliance on supplemental appropriations through the years. "Deliberate calculations and planning in anticipation...