Slate: Can the Army Go Broke?

[liberal N proud]

Can the Army Go Broke?
What happens when a war spending bill gets vetoed.
By Michelle Tsai
Updated Tuesday, May 1, 2007, at 6:49 PM ET

On Tuesday, President Bush vetoed a $124.2 billion war spending bill that stipulates a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Lawmakers may revise the legislation, but in the meantime, could the armed forces run out of money?

Yes, but it's very unlikely. Even if a standoff between Congress and the president kept the war spending bill on ice for a few months, the Department of Defense would be able to cover its expenses in Iraq. That's because most of the DoD's money comes from the annual defense appropriations act, which Congress OK'd in September. The $437 billion bill allocates funding for day-to-day military operations—pretty much everything besides Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror. But it also grants the DoD some flexibility to shift funds between programs.

The government currently pays for war-related costs like extra fuel out of $70 billion in emergency funds, which were part of the September package. If necessary, the DoD can move $7.5 billion of the total operations budget to more urgent needs, like forces in Iraq. This is enough to fund operations and maintenance in the Army through most of July, according to the Congressional Research Service,...

http://www.slate.com/id/2165280/?GT1=10034

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Not as long as they can bambooze the populace into believing in bogeymen.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken