DoD Budget Cuts May Spare Family Programs
Military.com
Amy Bushatz
October 11, 2011
Funding for Army family programs will likely not be among the targets of sweeping Defense Department budget cuts, top Army leaders pledged yesterday.
"I want to make a commitment here to you ... that we will not make Army family programs a bill payer for other kinds of initiatives," Secretary of the Army John McHugh said. "That's a place we've been in the past, and it's a place I don't want to help take us back to."
Instead McHugh said the service will focus on efficiency while convincing lawmakers to leave funding for key programs intact.
"Our democracy provides that the members of congress elected by the people make those decisions and then we try to work with those as best we can," he said. "Our job before then is to convey as best as we can the messages of what we think is important where we need to draw the lines."
Doing so should not be difficult, the Army's top general told Military.com. "This is one of the easiest issues we have with congress because they understand the importance of the families," said Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army's chief of staff. "It's about laying out a cognizant plan for them that they can understand."
The Defense Department is facing $450 billion in cuts over the next 10 years. That number could double if Congress fails to find $1.5 trillion in savings from the national budget.
Some family programs are already feeling the budget pinch, largely because Congress has yet to pass DoD funding for 2012, McHugh said.
For example, US Army bases on Japan's mainland in the past have employed four Family Readiness Support Advisors. As the people in those jobs have left over the last few months those positions have not been refilled, said Carolina Marinelli, an FRSA on Okinawa. She worries that the coming budget cuts could mean the jobs will be permanently eliminated.
But without a new budget, the Army cannot make a decision on those programs, McHugh explained.
"Our question is: what are our budgets going to look like?" he said. "There's no intent right now to cut [FRSAs] out, but it becomes a big challenge for base commanders when they're operating on a year old budget that just doesn't allow them the resources to do what they need to do."
Source: http://www.military.com/news/article/dod-budget-cuts-may-spare-family-programs.html?ESRC=eb.nl