The Pentagon is reducing the number of furlough days civilian employees must take, thanks to savings in other areas of its budget and permission it received from Congress to reprogram funds in its coffers.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel signed a memo Tuesday reducing the number of unpaid leave days for non-military personnel from 11 to six for fiscal year 2013, which ends Sept. 30. Roughly 650,000 workers have been subject to furloughs, which Hagel ordered in May following the start of sequestration cuts in March. Those sequestration funding reductions, of $500 billion in decade-long defense spending, are draining $37 billion from the Pentagon’s budget in FY ’13 alone.
Hagel said in a statement Tuesday that “thanks to the (Department of Defense’s) DoD’s efforts to identify savings and help from Congress, we will reduce the total numbers of furlough days for DoD civilian employees from 11 to six.”
This move comes in large part to the congressional defense committees’ partial approval of a large reprogramming request the Pentagon sent them in May. The last of the four panels gave their final decisions on the funds-shifting request–which moves monies from acquisition to operating accounts–to the Pentagon in late July, Hagel said.
The Pentagon is working with lawmakers “to meet remaining needs,” Hagel added.
The furlough reduction also was possible because the military is “experiencing less than expected costs in some areas, such as transportation of equipment out of Afghanistan,” he said.
The improved budgeting picture also has led Pentagon officials to reinstate funding for training and readiness efforts.
“The Air Force has begun flying again in key squadrons, the Army has increased funding for organizational training at selected units, and the Navy has restarted some maintenance and ordered deployments that otherwise would not have happened,” Hagel said.
He referred to the current budgeting cycle as one of the “most volatile and uncertain” the Pentagon has ever experienced.
Looking ahead to FY ’14, which starts Oct. 1, the Pentagon still “faces major fiscal challenges,” he said.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House appear to be nowhere near a deal to stop sequestration. The Pentagon’s sequestration cut–from planned defense spending–for FY ’14 would be $52 billion. That FY ’14 cut would be 40 percent greater than the FY ’13 one, Hagel noted.
“Facing this uncertainty, I cannot be sure what will happen next year, but I want to assure our civilian employees that we will do everything possible to avoid more furloughs,” Hagel said.
House Armed Services Committee member Mike Turner (R-Ohio) quickly picked up on the furlough news by making another call for lawmakers to end sequestration.
“The Defense Department cannot continue to play games with the professional and personal lives of these dedicated employees,” Turner said in a statement. “It is time for the president and the Senate to join the House in enacting legislation which would avert sequestration and return normalcy to the operations of our Defense Department.”