While serving as undersecretary of defense (comptroller), I presided over DoD financial management during the dark days of 2013 when sequestration slashed funding for military readiness. We used reprogramming to mitigate sequestration’s adverse effects on the DoD’s ability to fight and win wars. I know from personal experience that reprogramming is an arcane and tedious process. I also know that the DoD must have reprogramming authority to meet national security needs effectively.
During the past two years, the DoD has placed emphasis on financial reform issues such as audits of financial statements, and the department is to be commended for those and other efforts. But if this violation of the informal rules leads to severe restriction or elimination of reprogramming authority, the resulting problems could overshadow their reform efforts.
That was Robert Hale over at DefenseNews. He makes some good points. Hopefully one act of questionable and politically motivated reprogramming (the boarder wall) doesn’t make Congress bring the hammer down.
Most of the DOD’s money doesn’t go to mundane things like walls. A lot of it goes to the R&D, procurement, and operations/support of weapon systems. When the program budget forces you to plan specific activities 2 years ahead of funding receipt, and up to ten or more years until the funds are actually expended, you need reprogramming authority. To presume our foresight of advanced technology is so great is to misunderstand how blind we really are.
Even today, many programs are locked-in because reprogramming authority is relatively small. A prediction mistake will follow you around for years, and will indeed perpetuate itself because it is part of a fully-costed program and five-year financial plan. The DOD needs more, not less, authority to shift money to higher valued uses as more knowledge is gained along the way.
(Additional details on the boarder wall reprogramming, including the programs money was shifted out of, is here.)
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