A Defense Department official decried uncertainties caused by congressional inability to approve a spending bill that would fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year during a March 29 Senate hearing.

Temporary spending bills called continuing resolutions that last weeks to months have been the federal government's lot since the start of fiscal 2011 on Oct. 1. Disagreement between House Republicans and Senate and White House Democrats over the extent of spending cuts could hurtle the federal government into shutdown come the expiration of the current continuing resolution on April 8.

Congress's inability to pass a year-long appropriations bill--as the legislative branch is supposed to do--compels the Defense Department to waste money, said Robert Hale, the DoD comptroller and chief financial officer. Hale spoke before Senate Armed Services subcommittee on readiness and management support.

"It is causing inefficiencies. We are forcing our contracting officers to go to short term contracts to preserve capability, we've got several hundred military construction projects on hold as well as a number of procurement actions," Hale said. 

"Our bases are singing short term contracts, because they don't know what funding they will have in two months," Hale said, adding that those contracts "are just inherently inefficient."

Hale added that should Congress pass a spending measure to cover the rest of the fiscal year, the sudden rush of work to get planned acquisitions onto contract could be overwhelming to the "already understaffed and under-experienced contracting workforce."

"They'll have to try to catch up and when they do that they won't have as much time to compete and do a good job of competing," Hale said, hastening to add that "they will do their best, I'm not criticizing them."

Meanwhile, elsewhere on Capitol Hill, an apparently week-long breakdown of budget negotiations showed no public sign of resuming.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters March 29 he "can't see how we can do anything with folks on the other side of the Capitol and the other side of the aisle who now think this is a political game."

Senate Democrats were overheard by reporters earlier that day discussing talking points in which Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) instructed his colleagues to emphasize the word "extreme" when discussing the Republican position, which is that the basis of legislation funding the remaining two quarters of the federal fiscal year should be a House-approved bill that would make $61 billion in cuts against the fiscal 2010 level.

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage (prepared testimony and webcast available)
- read a transcript of a March 29 "pen and pad" session held by Rep. Cantor with reporters

Related Articles:
Fears of government shutdown revived 
Latest continuing resolution makes $6 billion in cuts 
Senate rejects two continuing resolution proposals 
Republicans downplay possibility of government shutdown