No Congressional nor command funding? - have a bake sale!

Maybe have a bake sale?

Somebody may have gotten into trouble with an unauthorized commitment of military facility funds. I mentioned in one of my newsletter tidbits about how the guy I thought might be a fundamentalist Christian had asked me if I knew where babies came from and had approached me to test the waters on whether I would be pliable to the notion of committing my insurance to their plight, to use my government insurance to cover the lack of funding his group had for some of the projects they had undertaken. As stated in the “Where do babies come from” tidbit item in a previous newsletter, the man was not a fundamentalist Christian. That guy had just thought it was appropriate to ask an inappropriate question. You will note that I do not capitalize the word fundamentalist; as I understand it, many denominations fall under the umbrella of fundamentalist, so the word is not capitalized. Naturally, if there were a specific Fundamentalist Christian religion, then the word fundamentalist would be capitalized.

But, getting back to budgetary concerns. The American citizenry elects representatives to be the people’s voice and do the country’s business. The Commander-in-chief is the head of the military by US Constitutional provisions, but Congress controls the purse strings. The Pentagon submits budget requests to Congress that reflect the Pentagon’s assessment of how best to meet the external threats facing our nation and the budget needed to maintain a prepared force to meet any challenges to our sovereignty that might arise. Nothing precludes Congress from budgeting for a military limited to a mere 100 personnel. However, such elected representatives would unlikely survive a recall petition or reelection bid. The point is that Congress allocates money for the Pentagon to spend; a certain amount is allocated for building ships, and a certain amount is allocated for facility needs, with large projects subject to individual approval and separate pots of money for maintaining and running military bases. Congress, unfortunately, doesn’t often fund enough money for all the things that everybody wants.

Way back when, a higher-ranking personnel came to me telling me they didn’t have enough money for all of the projects they had undertaken. I’m not sure if the higher-ranking person was military or civilian. From my perspective as a GS-850-11 who had come off an internship in the past year or two, I was not sure why the issue was brought to me. I understood civics from high school and perhaps university courses, but my time as a student employee in the ROICC North Bay office had left me well grounded in principles such as you don’t spend taxpayer money, in this particular case, money allotted to the military for facility purposes, without the express written permission from those much higher in the organization than I was at the time. I had not been delegated authority to expend military funds, and my grounding in reality as a student employee in such matters kept me from being tricked by others into thinking I could expend such funds merely because I was a government employee.

And so this higher-ranking personnel had brought an issue and I couldn’t understand why he brought it to me. This issue was brought up after the “babies come from storks” interaction, and other such interactions that had followed. Appreciating the man’s plight but not appreciating the unprofessional attitude that pervaded that work location, I replied, “Well, maybe you should have a bake sale.” But consider what this situation involves. This man apparently had launched various projects for which he had not secured funding, and considering such seemingly goes against the FARS (and DFARs), one had to wonder if that gentleman was exercising contracting authority that had not been delegated to him. I believe that the FARs, at least back then, made it incumbent upon the Contracting Officer to ensure that funds were set aside for a contract before advertising to the general public that such a contract was available to bid on. Really, the best thing that man could do was to go to his manager or commanding officer and beg for forgiveness or otherwise plead to cover his ass by getting that commanding officer or manager to reallocate funds to alleviate him from his plight. Of course, that man who approached me also had the option of taking out a mortgage to cover what seemingly were unauthorized commitments he might have made. A GS-850-11 was in no position to help out with funding issues; base commanders, Public Works Officers, and NAVFAC Captains and the people they report to (answer to) are the ones who make the decisions on how military facility funds are spent and which projects are given priority. Much of that authority is delegated to various lower-level civilian and military personnel. Such delegation, at least in my case, isn’t made to GS-850-11 electrical engineers who are barely out of their internship and working in what is commonly known as capital improvements. Authorities for committing funds, when delegated, is usually made to those within contracting departments whose personnel are well versed in government contracting regulations, and I imagine to various military personnel who have command authority over one function or another. Have a bake sale or take out a second mortgage? If I had done something like what seems to have happened concerning projects that that gentleman might have initiated, I would not be looking forward to the pending conversation with my manager.