Contingency Operations: Defense Cost and Funding Issues
NSIAD-96-121BR
Published: Mar 15, 1996. Publicly Released: Mar 15, 1996.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the costs of Department of Defense (DOD) contingency operations in fiscal year (FY) 1995, focusing on the: (1) extent to which an emergency supplemental appropriation covered those costs; (2) impact of funding shortages or overages on the services; and (3) accuracy of DOD and service methods for estimating such costs.
Recommendations
Matter for Congressional Consideration
| Matter | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| If Congress does not want emergency supplemental funds authorized and appropriated for contingency operations to be spent for other purposes, it may want to clearly specify in supplemental appropriation legislation that supplemental funds provided for contingency operations may only be used for the: (1) expenses incurred in support of contingency operations; and (2) reimbursement of accounts initially utilized to conduct those operations. |
Closed – Implemented
|
Congress has established an Overseas Contingency Operations Transfer Fund, which places funding for expenses related to overseas contingency operations in a transfer fund that the Secretary of Defense may transfer to the services. This allows the Secretary to provide funds as operations unfold during the year. |
| In instances where initial funding proves to be inadequate and Congress considers providing further funding, it may wish to require DOD to reprogram or transfer excess funds among the services if some services have costs below their funded level while others have costs above it before providing additional funds. |
Closed – Implemented
|
DOD, in an April 1996 reprogramming action, reduced their reprogramming request by $62.2 million. DOD did this by redistributing excess funds from various military personnel and operations and maintenance appropriation accounts that had been previously earmarked for certain contingencies. |
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Topics
Civic actionCost overrunsDefense contingency planningFunds managementContingency operationsFuture budget projectionsMilitary operationsSupplemental appropriationsMilitary forcesCost estimates