VCNO Moran: Navy Will Be ‘Just Flat Out Out Of Money’ Without Supplemental Funding; Would Cancel Flight Hours, Ship Avails
By: Megan Eckstein
February 7, 2017 6:56 PM • Updated: February 7, 2017 8:44 PM
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the re-work required on the recent USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) maintenance availability, due to source error. The ship required seven percent rework and saw a 42 percent growth in work.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Without a readiness-focused supplemental spending bill passed by lawmakers this spring, the Navy and Marine Corps would stop flying at home and ship and submarine maintenance availabilities would be canceled, the vice chief of naval operations and assistant commandant of the Marine Corps said at a hearing today.
The continuing resolution currently funding the government at last year’s spending levels is set to expire on April 28, 2017, and even if lawmakers could pass the Fiscal Year 2017 spending bill for the second half of the fiscal year, budget caps already in place mean that the Navy would receive about $5 billion less than it did in FY 2016. Having started the year, then, at a higher spending rate, dropping down to the FY 2017 budget would cause the Navy to almost immediately run out of operations and maintenance dollars in parts of its budget.
https://news.usni.org/2017/02/07/vcno-navy-will-be-just-flat-out-out-of-money-without-supplemental-funding-would-cancel-flight-hours-ship-avails
