By Stan Collender, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007

When vetoing the supplemental appropriation for Iraq on May 1, President Bush said that unless Congress sends him a bill he is willing to sign, "the military [will have] to take money from some other account or training program so the troops in combat have what they need," and the Pentagon "will have to consider cutting back on buying new equipment or repairing existing equipment."

	If the troops don't have the resources they need, it will be because the president refused to provide them.

The president either misspoke, was misinformed or was not telling us the real story. The truth is that if the troops don't have the resources they need, it will be because the president refused to provide them. This is nothing new: a federal budget-related law has existed to deal with situations like this literally since Abraham Lincoln was president.

In 1861, Congress passed and the president signed the Food and Forage Act, which allows the government to obligate funds for the military before an appropriation is in place for food, fuel, forage and related items to meet current needs. Food and Forage not only remains in effect today, but the Bush administration has already used it. The Pentagon invoked the law shortly after 9/11 so that it didn't have to wait for the legislative process to be completed to respond to the situation.

What's the difference between 2001 and 2007? For political reasons, the president is far more willing to veto bills produced by today's Democratic-controlled Congress than he was when the House and Senate had a Republican majority. Providing a rationale for a veto is important. Therefore, it's useful for the White House to say the supplemental will hurt the troops even though the president has the ability to prevent that harm.

Food and Forage turns the federal budget world on its head. The standard procurement process is for obligations to be incurred by a federal department or agency only after an appropriation is enacted. Food and Forage allows funds to be obligated before the appropriation is in place.

In other words, the deadlines the White House keeps using for the Iraq supplemental are irrelevant. Indeed, the Pentagon may have already begun to obligate funds for this purpose while the debate on the supplemental is continuing.

Food and Forage is an exception to one of the most important spending controls in Washington: the Anti-Deficiency Act. As any federal employee involved in procurement will tell you, this law prevents a contracting officer from approving an expenditure or an obligation that exceeds an appropriation. She or he can be sent to jail if they violate the act's provisions.

In accordance with the U.S. Constitution, actual spending can only occur when the appropriation is enacted, so contractors don't get paid. But in the meantime, the troops in the field can get the goods and services they need.

A contractor could refuse to do business with the federal government under these circumstances. That seems unlikely, however, given the literally billions of dollars in business at stake and the virtual certainty that an appropriation will eventually be enacted.

The president's other statement -- that if an appropriation is not enacted money may have to be taken from "some other account or training program" -- was also misleading for two reasons.

First, funds have been transferred from other Pentagon accounts since activities in Iraq and Afghanistan began. Second, many of the troops who would have gone through training this year in the United States are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of the training that was planned and budgeted at the beginning of the year has either been shifted to Iraq and Afghanistan or will not occur at all.

The truth about the Iraq supplemental is that the president's condemnation of Democrats for putting the troops in jeopardy is just as much of a political ploy as what he accused Congress of doing: playing politics by sending him a supplemental it knew he wouldn't sign.

Regardless of whether Congress passes a supplemental appropriation any time soon, the president already has the authority to make sure the troops have what they need when they need it. The whole debate is more about political than military maneuvers.

Good Deficit, Bad Deficit
The Congressional Budget Office last week reported that the FY07 deficit could be closer to $150 billion than the $200 billion it projected earlier because of much higher-than-expected revenues. This is good but not great news.

It's good news because, if the projections hold up, federal borrowing will be less than expected this year and that will lower interest payments on the debt compared to what they would otherwise be. It's not great news because this is the equivalent of the government winning the lottery instead of making a permanent change in the imbalance between taxes and spending. The long-term budget forecast and impending federal budget debacle remain unchanged.

The White House and its supporters will probably hype the latest numbers when the Treasury Department's next monthly report is released. But even if the deficit is close to zero by the end of FY08, nearly $2 trillion will have been added to the federal debt while George W. Bush was president. That makes the starting and ending points far less important.

-- Stan Collender is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor and managing director at Qorvis Communications in Washington, D.C. A frequent speaker on the budget and the economy to audiences across the country, he is also author of "The Guide to the Federal Budget." His e-mail address is secollender@nationaljournal.com.

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