The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Capitol Hill’s nonpartisan green eyeshaded experts, believe Washington will continue to boost funding for purchases, loans and other activities under the Defense Production Act, from $150 million in 2010 to $300 million by 2014.

While government authority to make loans and loan guarantees has been moribund since the 1980s, those authorities are revised in the latest reauthorization of the law, which occurred Sept. 30.

In recent years, the Pentagon has called on the 1950 act — which has to be reauthorized regularly — to produce and refine beryllium metal for various military satellites and other defense programs, as well as to expand domestic sources for certain high-performance electronic components used in radars, electronic warfare systems, and power control systems and to produce radiation-hardened microelectronics. Over the last five years, annual appropriations for such purposes have more than doubled from $43 million to $100 million, according to CBO.

Plus, the Sept. 30 reauthorization made notable changes to the act’s domain, such as raising the carryover limit on unobligated balances from prior-year appropriations from $400 million to $750 million. Unobligated balances before had never exceeded $7 million, according to the congressional budgeters, so increasing that limit indicates the administration anticipates a need for significant increases in future appropriations. And while the Defense Dept. has been responsible for most activities under the act in the past, the Homeland Security Dept. has indicated it intends to use the authority in the future to restore critical national infrastructure in the event of a disaster.

“Based on information from the administration, CBO expects that the authorities will be used in the future and the declining economy may provide more opportunities and incentives to do so,” budgeters said in a Nov. 5 scoring report.

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