Mar 29, 2013
Part 2 of the Continuing Resolution which funds the government until September 30th. In this section, we look at the funding for the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
H.R. 933: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 B= Billion M= Million DIVISION C: DEFENSE DEPARTMENT (TOTAL FUNDING: $597,086,714,000) Title I—Military Personnel
- $127.5 B: Total funding
Title II—Operation and Maintenance
- $173 B: Total funding
Title III—Procurement
- $100 B: Total funding
- Public funding for private procurements
- In every category:
- "Expansion of public and private plants including the land necessary"
- "Procurement and installation of equipment, appliances, and machine tools in public and private plants"
- "contractor-owned equipment lay-away" = no interest is charged
Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy
- No money can be used to construct ships in foreign shipyards
Title IV—Research, Development, Test and Evaluation
- $70 B: Total funding
Title V—Revolving and Management Funds
- $1.5 B: Defense Working Capital Funds
Title VI—Other Department of Defense Programs
- $32.7 B: Health programs
- $1.1 B: Drug rehab programs for military personnel
- $350 M: Inspector General
Title VII—Related agencies Title VIII—General provisions Section 8001
- No money can be used for publicity or propaganda
Section 8002
- Laws prohibiting employment of non-citizens doesn't apply to the Department of Defense
- Salary increases for foreigners can't be more than civilian DoD employees get or more than the person's home country provides, whichever is higher
- This doesn't apply to Turkish citizens working for the Defense Department.
Section 8020
- No money can be used for national or international political or psychological activities
Section 8024
- No money can be used to by steel plates which were not produced in the U.S. or Canada
Section 8026
- DoD may contract out depot maintenance activities to private firms if done in a competitive way
- The Bush administration's procedure was known as an OMB Circular A-76 will not be used
- Became prohibited after the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal in 2007
- Walter Reed was privatized in 2006 to IAP Worldwide Services, which was owned by a capital management company headed by Bush's former Treasury Secretary, John Snow. The company itself was headed by former high ranking executives from KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary.
- 2004: The Army it would be more cost-effective to do the work in-house
- Immediately after taking control of Walter Reed, the company cut staff from 180 workers to 100.
- The A-76 process seemed to favor the private sector and allowed inherently governmental functions to be transferred to the private sector
Section 8035
- If someone puts a label saying "Made in America" on a product that wasn't, that person may be prohibited from contracting with the Defense Department.
Section 8039
- No money can be used to contract a Defense Department function that is currently done by government employees unless:
- A price competition is performed
- The private contractor would be less expensive by at least 10% or $10 M
- The contractor doesn't skimp on employee health insurance coverage in order to win the bid
- This doesn't apply to depot maintenance
- $23.5 B appropriated for depot maintenance, which is over $811 M more than requested.
Section 8044
- No money can go towards reducing the staff at medical treatment facilities below levels from September 30, 2003
Section 8047
- Defense Department can only purchase supercomputers that are made in the United States, unless they want something that isn't available here
Section 8050
- No Defense Department funds can go towards paying a contractor bonus that is more than 100% of that person's salary or a bonus that's part of a merger
Section 8054
- The Defense Department can upgrade the heating system at the Kaiserslautern Military Community in Germany as long as the new system uses United States coal
Section 8057
- Defense Department can't train any foreign security forces that have committed human rights abuses, but this can be waived by the Defense Secretary in "extraordinary circumstances"
Section 8058
- No funds can be used for repairs or maintenance to military family housing units
Section 8063
- No funds can be used to transfer armor piercing weapons to any non-governmental entity
Section 8065
- Defense Department money spent on stocking or selling alcohol on military bases needs to go to locally produced beer and wine.
- Applies to bases in States "which are not contiguous with another State."
Section 8070
- $479,736,000 for Israel
- $211 M for Iron Dome Missile defense ($0 requested)
Section 8076
- No money can go towards developing nuclear armed missile interceptors
Section 8079
- No money will be available for using foreign intelligence that wasn't lawfully collected
- "Information pertaining to United States' persons shall only be handled in accordance with protections provided in the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution as implemented through Executive Order No. 12333
- Executive Order 12333 says data will be collected using procedures established by the head of the Intelligence Community and approved by the Attorney General.
Section 8083
- No money can go towards transferring the MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone out of the Army's control
- MQ-1C Gray Eagle is an upgrade to the Predator drone and has been able to fire Hellfire missiles since 2010
Section 8097
- No funds can go towards a contract with a company that forces its employees to resolve sexual assault or other disputes through arbitration. This goes for their subcontractors too.
Section 8098
- No money can go to ACORN.
Section 8109
- No money can go towards the transfer of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay.
Section 8110
- No money can go towards transferring a prisoner from Guantanamo Bay to their home country - or any other country- unless the Defense Secretary tells Congress 30 days prior. Notice must confirm that the government of receiving country:
- Is not a "state sponsor of terrorism"
- Has agreed to make sure the person can't threaten the United States in the future
- Will give any information about this person to the United States when requested
- Exceptions
- It's ordered to be done by a court or tribunal
- A pre-trial agreement has been made in a military commissions case before this bill became law
- The Secretary will take "alternative actions" (which are undefined)
- The transfer is in the U.S. national security interests
Section 8111
- No money can be used to construct or modify a prison inside the United States for the purpose of housing Guantanamo Bay detainees
- Upgrades can be made to Guantanamo Bay
Section 8112
- No money can be used to enter into a contract with a corporation with unpaid Federal taxes… unless the "agency" says it's cool.
Section 8113
- No money can be used to enter into a contract with corporation that's been convicted of a felony… unless the "agency" says it's cool.
Section 8118
- "The Secretary of the Air Force shall obligate and expend funds previously appropriated for the procurement of RQ-4B Global Hawk and C-27J Spartan aircraft for the purposes for which such funds were originally appropriated."
- RQ-4B Global Hawks overfunded compared to request by $107 million
- C-27J Spartan: Budget request $0, given $137,863,000
Section 8119
- The next warship will be named after Senator Ted Stevens
Section 8120
- No funds can be used to retire the C-23 Sherpa aircraft.
- The C-27J aircraft, funded in section 8118, was selected to replace the C-23 Sherpa in 2007.
- Budget request: $0, given $10,300,000 to retain 8 planes, down from 23 in 2008
Title IX—Overseas contingency operations (Global War on Terror)
- $87 B: Total funding
- $5 B: Training Afghanistani soldiers
- $325 M: Afghanistan infrastructure
- $10 M: Inspector General
Section 9007
- No money can "establish" a military installation for the purpose of a permanent stationing of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq.
- No money can be used to exercise U.S. control over any oil resource in Iraq
- No money can be used to "establish" any military installation for permanent stationing in Afghanistan
Section 9012
- $508 M: Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq
- Security assistance teams, life support, transportation, personal security, facilities renovation, and construction.
Section 9014
- No money can go to Pakistan unless they:
- Cooperate in the US in counter terror efforts against Al Qaeda and others
- Do not interfere in Afghanistan
- Dismantle IED netowrks
- Prevent the spread of nuclear information and material
- Issue visa's quickly to United State's officials working on counter terrorism
- Give humanitarian organizations access to their prisoners
- The Defense Secretary can waive these requirements & can submit the reasons in classified form
DIVISION D—HOMELAND SECURITY (TOTAL FUNDING: $47 B) Title I—Departmental management and operations
- $1 B: Total funding
Title II—Security, enforcement, and investigations U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration
- $15.5 B: Total funding
Border Patrol
- Must maintain at least 21,370 full time agents
- $515 M available for drones & marine vessels
Immigration
- $5.4 B: Total funding
- Must maintain at least 34,000 detention beds
- $2.7 B: For detention and deportations
TSA (Transportation Security Administration)
- $7 B: Total funding
- $4 B: Screening operations
- $1 B: Federal air marshals
- Staffing limited to 46,000 employees
- 9 months after passage, procedures for a Known Crewmember pilot program need to be submitted to Congress
Coast Guard
- $10 B: Total funding
- Includes $1.4 B for retiree benefits
Secret Service
- $1.6 B: Total funding
Title III—Protection, preparedness, response, and recovery Infrastructure Protection & Information Security
- $1.1 B: Funding available until September 30, 2014
Federal Protective Service
- Funded by user fees
- Must have at least 1,371 staffers, 1,007 police officers/special agents
Office of Biometric Identity
- $232 M: Total funding
- US-VISIT program fingerprints and photographs every non-US citizen who enters the country.
- 30,000 Federal, state, and local officers have access to the data
- The program is supposed to "collect biometrics" from non-U.S. citizens leaving at their gates
- Accenture is the contractor for US-VISIT services at the time they were first given the contract, the corporation was registered in Bermuda - a tax haven country. It's now headquartered in Ireland- known for their low corporate tax rate- even though it's operational headquarters are in Chicago and NYC.
Office of Health Affairs
- $133 M: BioWatch
- Created after the 2001 anthrax attacks and announced in Bush's 2003 State of the Union (1:36:50 on CSPAN)
- Sensors located in EPA air filters designed to detect airborne pathogens in Philadelphia, NYC, DC, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, and Los Angeles.
- The system is designed to alert the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI of any significant dangers
- Has only produced false alarms and no evacuations have ever been ordered or medicines distributed due to a positive reading on this system
- Has already cost $1 B, an upgrade would cost $3.1 B; they've begun the contracting competition between three contractors
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
- $3.5 B: FEMA operations
- $7 B: Disaster relief fund
National Flood Insurance Fund
- $171 M that will be funded by insurance premiums
- Salaries, flood mitigation efforts, and flood insurance operations, flood plain mapping
- Funding caps:
- $132 M cap on operating expenses
- $120 M cap on flood mitigation efforts
- $1 B + cap on commissions and taxes of agents
National Pre-disaster Mitigation Fund
- $25 M available until expended
Emergency Food and Shelter
- $120 M available until expended
Title IV—Research and development, training, and services United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
- $112 M: E-Verify program
- Internet system that checks to make sure an employee is legally allowed to work in the United States
Title V—General provisions Section 516
- No Circular A-76 competitions allowed for services provided by immigration officers, contact representatives, and investigative assistants
Section 522
- No money can go towards reorganizing the Department of Homeland Security
Section 525
- Extends authority of the Department of Homeland Security to carry out prototype projects related to weapons or weapons systems that may be bought or created by the Department of Defense
Section 529
- No money can go towards reducing staff at the Coast Guard
Section 530
- No money can go toward preventing a non-seller from bringing prescription drugs that are less than a 90 day supply
Section 533
- No money can go towards planning, testing, or developing a national identification card
Section 534
- The TSA Administrator can except certain airports from using the E-Verify program as long as they tell Congress that no security risks will result
Section 538
- Can't transfer Khalid Sheik Mohammad or any other detainee out of Guantanamo Bay
Section 539
- No first class travel for DHS employees
Section 540
- DHS employees can't be punished for using protective equipment like respirators, gloves, etc.
Section 544
- 6 months after bill signed, TSA must tell Congress if all air cargo is being screened, and if not, when it will be
Section 545
- In developing screening procedures, DHS Secretary will make sure the procedures "take into consideration such passengers' and crews' privacy and civil liberties consistent with applicable laws, regulations, and guidance."
Section 551
- DHS can sell detention facilities as long as there are at least 34,000 beds available for immigrant detainees
Section 554
- No money for ACORN
Section 558
- $202 M: Establish a "Federal Network Security" program, which includes a "continuous monitoring and diagnostics program"
- The software can't give DHS any personally identifiable information or communications between employees of other agencies
- The software needs to be installed in accordance with privacy laws
- Exempted: Congress, Judicial Branch, Defense Department, CIA, and NSA
Section 559
- No porn allowed on government networks
Section 567
- No money can go towards creating a Public Advocate position within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- Public Advocate: In NYC, acts as a "watchdog", speaks to government officials on behalf of the public