Pentagon Official Describes Impact to Military of Federal Shutdown
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Photodisc/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — With a government shutdown looming, Defense Department Comptroller Bob Hale Friday unveiled the Pentagon’s contingency plan.
Military members will continue to show up for work, eventually receiving backpay when Congress passes a funding bill. Hale said “roughly half” the Department of Defense’s 800,000 civilian employees will show up for work as well and will also get retroactive payments if and when Congress passes a bill to fund the government.
The other half, Hale said, will stay home on unpaid furloughs and will have to wait for separate Congressional action to collect their backpay.
“A lapse of appropriation causes civilian furloughs. That is one more blow to the morale of our civilian workforce. Now morale is already low and, I think, would get lower, and that adversely affects productivity and costs the taxpayers money,” Hale explained Friday.
Key military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere will continue as normal because they fall under the legal requirement that the military can only continue with activities “designed to protect safety of life and property.”
“We can and will continue to support key military operations. We’re allowed to do that by law. But the law would force us to disrupt many of our support activities. [We] wouldn’t be able to do most training. We couldn’t enter into most new contracts. Routine maintenance would have to stop,” he said.
In general, Hale said a government shutdown disrupts military planning and causes military personnel to worry what will happen to their paychecks, “rather than focusing fully on their mission.”
“For all these reasons, I very much hope that Congress acts to avert a lapse of appropriations. And though it’ll probably sound contradictory, I hope you will understand when I say that I hope we are all wasting our time planning for this lapse,” Hale said.
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