ARLINGTON, Va. — The Office of Anticipatory Victory Posture announced Monday afternoon that it had retained outside lobbying counsel to secure congressional funding for battles tentatively scheduled in 2031, marking what the office described as “an important expansion of our forward-looking commemorative capacity.”

The retained firm, identified in the office’s Monday-afternoon press handout only as “a boutique government-affairs practice with experience in unconventional appropriations,” will be paid an undisclosed retainer to develop and execute a multi-year lobbying strategy aimed at securing dedicated appropriations for the office’s portfolio of projected conflicts.

A senior office official, in a Monday-afternoon briefing held in the office’s increasingly cramped E-ring suite, said the lobbying engagement reflected the office’s recognition that “the commemorative calendar through the end of the decade requires advance financial preparation in ways that the standard fiscal-year cycle does not adequately support.”

The office’s projected commemorative calendar through 2031, briefed in summary form to attending reporters, includes wreath-laying ceremonies for approximately fourteen distinct projected conflicts, the official conclusion of three theater-level engagements that have not been initiated, and the issuance of approximately two hundred commemorative challenge coins covering events whose locations have not yet been determined.

“We are essentially asking Congress to forward-fund a calendar of victories that we are very confident will eventually be either fought and won or skipped and won,” the official said. “Either way, the ceremonies must be paid for, and the planning horizons for those ceremonies extend well beyond the standard appropriations window.”

The retained lobbyist, a former House Armed Services Committee staff member who declined to be identified in the office’s press handout, will conduct what the office described as “Hill-side education work” with members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, focused on the substantive question of how anticipatory victory expenditures should be classified for budgetary scoring purposes.

The Congressional Budget Office, contacted Monday afternoon for comment on the classification question, said the office had received an informal inquiry from the lobbyist regarding the appropriate budgetary treatment of anticipatory victory expenditures but had not yet developed a formal scoring methodology. A senior CBO analyst, speaking on background, said the agency’s preliminary view was that the expenditures could be treated as “discretionary outlays for projected commemorative events” but acknowledged that the classification raised “several novel methodological questions.”

The lobbyist’s first scheduled Hill meeting, set for Tuesday morning with the senior Republican staff of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, will introduce the office’s funding request for fiscal year 2027 and will preview the office’s longer-horizon funding strategy through fiscal year 2031. The staff member said the meeting agenda would include “a substantive walkthrough of the office’s commemorative calendar” and “an open discussion of the appropriate funding instruments for forward-projected commemorative work.”

A senior Defense Subcommittee staffer, contacted Monday afternoon for background, said the staff had “received the meeting request” and would conduct the meeting “with the standard openness we extend to all stakeholders.” The staffer declined to characterize the staff’s likely posture on the substantive funding request but noted that the subcommittee’s interest in “novel categories of defense expenditure” had been “meaningful but bounded” through the current fiscal cycle.

The office’s leadership council, in a Monday-evening internal communication that the office shared with reporters, expressed confidence in the lobbying strategy and indicated that the office would “expand the engagement scope” if the initial Hill meetings produced “the substantive interest the office is projecting.” The communication noted that the office had identified several House and Senate members who had been “broadly supportive” of the office’s substantive direction during informal conversations through the past two weeks.

A senior Office of Management and Budget official, asked Monday afternoon for the administration’s view of the lobbying engagement, said OMB had been “in dialogue” with the office’s leadership through the past several weeks and that the lobbying engagement had been “informally cleared” with the relevant OMB program examiners. The official emphasized that the administration retained “appropriate institutional oversight” of the office’s substantive activities.

The office confirmed Monday afternoon that the lobbying engagement would not affect the office’s ongoing recruitment of pre-history specialists, with the two open positions in that category still expected to be filled by the end of the second quarter. The pre-history specialists’ substantive responsibilities, the office reminded reporters, will include the development of historical content for events projected to occur during fiscal years 2030 through 2034.

The office’s revised inaugural wreath-laying ceremony, previously scheduled for early June and subsequently postponed to allow the office’s new staff historian time to draft ceremonial remarks, has now been rescheduled for the week of June 22. A senior office official, asked whether the new date was likely to hold, said the office was “broadly confident in the date” while acknowledging that “the underlying historical questions remain in active development.”

The office’s next major public event will be a media briefing scheduled for Friday afternoon, at which the office will preview its fiscal-year 2027 budget request and will introduce the lobbying firm’s principal partner to the Washington press corps. The briefing’s agenda has been described by the office’s communications team as “ambitious in scope and considered in detail.”

The retained lobbyist’s first quarterly report to the office’s leadership council is scheduled for the end of August, with the report’s substantive content expected to address the Hill-side educational work conducted through the summer and the lobbyist’s substantive recommendations for the office’s appropriations engagement in the September-October fiscal cycle.