Army Civilians Could Receive Furlough Notices by Christmas

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2007 – Some Army civilian employees may get layoff notices before Christmas, because $178 billion in emergency funds have not yet been approved to continue the war on terror, a senior Defense Department official said today.
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“Anyone who thinks that this is not a serious situation is simply misinformed or is ignoring the facts. We have tried to be as matter of fact as we can on this, but the reality is that we are using our program budget for FY 08 … to fund our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Whitman said.

If funding continues to be delayed, it could affect as many as 200,000 civilian employees and contractors, DoD officials reported earlier.

“In mid-February, the Army will run out of all of their O&M funding for the entire year, because they will have spent it on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. That will require some fairly significant and harsh actions by the department, specifically the Army. And the Marine Corps is only about a month behind them,” Whitman said.

Military installations soon will have to shut down operations and furlough civilian employees, terminate contracts, and move into what Whitman called a “warm” status.

“Facts are the facts. We’re trying to keep people as well informed as we can, but anybody that thinks that we have sufficient funding to go beyond what we have stated is just either misinformed or electing not to examine the facts,” he said.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48313