The Feed and Forage Act of 1861 is legislation passed by the United States Congress that allows the Military Departments to incur obligations in excess of available appropriations for clothing, subsistence, fuel, quarters, transportation and medical supplies. This provision is currently codified in 41 U.S.C. § 6301 (previously 41 U.S.C. § 11 and section 3732 of the Revised Statutes). It also authorizes incurring deficiencies for costs of additional members of the Armed Forces on active duty-beyond the number for which funds are currently provided in DoD appropriations (Title 10 U.S.C.).
This authority requires Congressional notification and does not permit actual expenditures until Congress provides an appropriation of the required funds.
YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/3Views:932 6309072 278
-
Inside the ant colony - Deborah M. Gordon
-
Getting to Know Sorghum
-
Testing Endophyte Infected Tall Fescue
Transcription
Think about all the things that need to happen for a human settlement to thrive: obtaining food, building shelter, raising children and more. There needs to be a way to divide resources, organize major efforts and distribute labor efficiently. Now imagine having to do this without any sort of planning or higher level communication. Welcome to the ant colony. Ants have some of the most complex social organization in the animal kingdom, living in structured colonies containing different types of members who perform specific roles. But although this may sound similar to some human societies, this organization doesn't arise from any higher level decisions, but is part of a biologically programmed cycle. In many species, all the winged males and winged virgin queens from all the nearby colonies in the population each leave from their different nests and meet at a central place to mate, using pheromones to guide each other to a breeding ground. After mating, the males die off, while females try to establish a new colony. The few that are successful settle down in a suitable spot, lose their wings, and begin laying eggs, selectively fertilizing some using stored sperm they've saved up from mating. Fertilized eggs grow into female workers who care for the queen and her eggs. They will then defend the colony and forage for food, while unfertilized eggs grow into males whose only job is to wait until they are ready to leave the nest and reproduce, beginning the cycle again. So how do worker ants decide what to do and when? Well, they don't really. Although they have no methods of intentional communication, individual ants do interact with one another through touch, sound and chemical signals. These stimuli accomplish many things from serving as an alarm to other ants if one is killed, to signaling when a queen is nearing the end of her reproductive life. But one of the most impressive collective capabilities of an ant colony is to thoroughly and efficiently explore large areas without any predetermined plan. Most species of ants have little or no sense of sight and can only smell things in their vicinity. Combined with their lack of high level coordination, this would seem to make them terrible explorers, but there is an amazingly simple way that ants maximize their searching efficiency; by changing their movement patterns based on individual interactions. When two ants meet, they sense each other by touching antennae. If there are many ants in a small area this will happen more often causing them to respond by moving in more convoluted, random paths in order to search more thoroughly. But in a larger area, with less ants, where such meetings happen less often, they can walk in straight lines to cover more ground. While exploring their environment in this way, an ant may come across any number of things, from threats or enemies, to alternate nesting sites. And some species have another capability known as recruitment. When one of these ants happens to find food, it will return with it, marking its path with a chemical scent. Other ants will then follow this pheromone trail, renewing it each time they manage to find food and return. Once the food in that spot is depleted, the ants stop marking their return. The scent dissipates and ants are no longer attracted to that path. These seemingly crude methods of search and retrieval are, in fact, so useful that they are applied in computer models to obtain optimal solutions from decentralized elements, working randomly and exchanging simple information. This has many theoretical and practical applications, from solving the famous traveling salesman problem, to scheduling computing tasks and optimizing Internet searches, to enabling groups of robots to search a minefield or a burning building collectively, without any central control. But you can observe these fascinatingly simple, yet effective, processes directly from some simple experiments, by allowing ants to enter empty spaces of various sizes and paying attention to their behavior. Ants may not be able to vote, hold meetings or even make any plans, but we humans may still be able to learn something from the way that such simple creatures are able to function so effectively in such complex ways.
History
The act has been amended over time and now, as codified at 41 U.S.C. § 6301, reads:[1]
(a) In General.—A contract or purchase on behalf of the Federal Government shall not be made unless the contract or purchase is authorized by law or is under an appropriation adequate to its fulfillment.
(b) Exception.—
- (1) Definition.—In this subsection, the term “defined Secretary” means—
- (A) the Secretary of Defense; or
- (B) the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when the Coast Guard is not operating as a service in the Navy.
- (2) In general.—Subsection (a) does not apply to a contract or purchase made by a defined Secretary for clothing, subsistence, forage, fuel, quarters, transportation, or medical and hospital supplies.
- (3) Current year limitation.—A contract or purchase made by a defined Secretary under this subsection may not exceed the necessities of the current year.
- (4) Reports.—The defined Secretary shall immediately advise Congress when authority is exercised under this subsection. The defined Secretary shall report quarterly on the estimated obligations incurred pursuant to the authority granted in this subsection.
(c) Special Rule for Purchase of Land.—Land may not be purchased by the Federal Government unless the purchase is authorized by law.
It has been invoked on a number of occasions to deal with emergencies.
- It was cited on several occasions to support the Vietnam War.
- In 1990, $1.6 billion was obligated under the act during Operation Desert Shield.
- In 1994, the act was invoked to support of Operation Restore Democracy in Haiti.
- In 1996, the act was invoked after the Khobar Towers bombing although ultimately no funds were obligated under it.[2]
- In 2001, act was invoked immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks.[2] Notably, Congress acted swiftly enough that an appropriations bill was enacted prior to DOD obligating any funding under the act.
Controversy
There is a controversy over whether, and the extent to which, the Act lets a President fund military operations for which Congress has not appropriated funds.
In November 2006, member of Congress and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich wrote that the President could cite the Act to continue the Iraq War even if Congress withheld funds. [3] In May 2007, the National Journal published an article echoing this argument. [4]
In response, OmbWatch.org published "Exploring the Scope of the Feed and Forage Act of 1861"[5] suggesting a more limited interpretation:
... interpreting the Feed and Forage Act broadly probably gives great flexibility to Department of Defense officials to obtain anything they deem necessary, so long as it is for a short-term need that occurred in an emergency, could not be feasibly obtained through normal procedures, and was used in the fiscal year in which it was obtained. This interpretation would give Congress and the president much more, if not unlimited, time to negotiate a compromise...[5]
Others [1] have argued that the Act cannot allow the President to continue military operations where Congress has used its Power of the purse to end them. It is argued that the intent of the Framers was that "the whole power of raising armies was lodged in the LEGISLATURE, not in the EXECUTIVE" [6] The Department of Defense's Financial Management Regulations notes that : "The Department shall limit its use of the authority in 41 U.S.C 11 to emergency circumstances." [5]
Name Confusion
Many sources refer to a "Food and Forage Act"[2] but the name used by the U.S. Government is "Feed and Forage Act".[2][5]
References
- ^ "41 U.S. Code § 6301 - Authorization requirement". LII / Legal Information Institute.
- ^ a b c "DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE INVOKES FEED AND FORAGE ACT". United States Department of Defense. 2001-09-11. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ Dennis Kucinich (2006-11-30). "There Is Only One Way To End The Iraq War". Huffington Post. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ Stan Collender (2007-05-08). "The Truth About The Iraq Supplemental". National Journal. Retrieved September 30, 2007.[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b c d Stan Collender (2007-05-22). "Exploring the Scope of the Feed and Forage Act of 1861" (PDF). OMBWatch.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 5, 2007. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ Alexander Hamilton. "Federalist No. 24". Yale Law School. Archived from the original on October 2, 2007. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
![](/s/i/modif.png)