Lawmakers returning from state and district work periods in a few weeks will consider two plans to keep the government open past the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year: A House-passed bill extending funds through Dec. 4, and a Senate plan to keep the lights on until Dec. 11.

There has been no discussion of passing a full budget before the start of FY 2027, meaning the Pentagon would operate under temporary appropriations. It’s far from a new phenomenon – one that’s happened all but 12 times in the past 49 years, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

MOAA has outlined the costs of these continuing resolutions to the total force on multiple occasions – servicemembers facing training delays or maintenance deferments, uniformed services families budgeting for potentially delayed paychecks or reduced installation services, and Pentagon planners spending countless hours preparing for potential funding lapses.

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The GAO report provides figures to back up these concerns, pulling from surveys and interviews of officials with various Pentagon projects:

• Nearly half of the acquisition programs in the survey (36 of 74) reported scheduling challenges stemming from budget uncertainty, and about 30% (22 of 74) reported financial issues. The Marine Corps Amphibious Combat Vehicle program “incurred an additional $17.7 million in costs due to changes in foreign exchange rates from fiscal year 2022 through fiscal year 2024,” resulting from delayed appropriations, for example.
  
  
• F-35 program officials “estimate that 20 percent of their financial management staff’s time is spent adjusting their budget to manage through [continuing resolution] constraints.”
  
  
• Facilities officials described multiple instances of delayed contracts leading to ballooning budgets. One sustainment deal at Joint Base San Antonio was estimated to cost $579,000 but couldn’t be completed until final appropriations were available … at which point the estimate topped $1.4 million. The FY 2024 continuing resolution led to a 66% hike in the cost of facilities sustainment projects at that installation, according to the report.

[RELATED: MOAA’s Summer Advocacy in Action Campaign]

The Bottom Line

These budget delays not only disrupt the total force, they also waste billions of dollars in taxpayer money – funds that could be put toward any number of national security priorities. This election cycle, join MOAA in our ongoing efforts to move lawmakers toward breaking this cycle of unfinished budgetary business.

Keep up with this and other key MOAA legislative priorities by visiting our advocacy news page.