New York Times editorial, 14 August 2010
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pledged to restrain military spending. Predictably, members of Congress, industry lobbyists and military commanders are all pushing back. This is a battle well worth fighting. If anything, he needs to be even more ambitious.
The Pentagon's budget has doubled in the last decade to nearly $550 billion, not including the extra $159 billion this year to pay for two wars. There is no way to address the nation's deep fiscal crisis or its security threats without a more rational approach to defense procurement and tough choices on personnel policies.
Mr. Gates has already taken some sound preliminary steps. He has canceled or cut back several dozen unneeded weapons programs, a projected long-term savings of $330 billion, and ordered the military services and Pentagon agencies to find $100 billion in administrative cuts and efficiencies over the next five years.
His latest proposed savings, outlined last week, are modest - despite the political fire they are drawing. He is calling for closing the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. (it allocates forces around the world and encourages the services to work together on the battlefield). That could mean the loss of 2,800 jobs for military and civilian workers supported by 3,000 private contractors at an annual savings of $240 million. Mr. Gates also proposed a 30 percent cut over three years on contractors who provide support services to the military, placed a freeze on the number of workers in his office, and said he planned to eliminate at least 50 posts for generals and admirals and 150 for senior civilians, and shut down two Pentagon agencies that employ 550 more people.
Far more important, and politically difficult, is Mr. Gates's vow to rein in military health care spending: the annual bill rose from $19 billion to $50 billion over the last decade. Active-duty members of the military rightly do not pay for care. Annual premiums for retirees, $460 per family, have not risen in 15 years and must be increased.
A task force commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank and a bipartisan group of colleagues estimates that raising retiree premiums (it referenced an earlier study that talked about gradually increasing them to about $1,100 a family, still far below commercial rates), plus charging an enrollment fee for a program that provides a wraparound policy for Medicare-eligible retirees, could save $6 billion annually.
Mr. Gates, a savvy Washington insider, is trying to pre-empt even deeper cuts. He still wants to ensure an annual spending increase 1 percent over inflation for the foreseeable future. That is still too much.
He needs to jettison more poorly performing, redundant or anachronistic weapons systems, including nuclear weapons. Once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the administration must look at trimming troop strength, beginning with the Navy and the Air Force.
Since the 9/11 attacks, Congress has given the Pentagon pretty much everything it has requested, with few questions asked. So it is good news that some members are now looking more critically at the Pentagon budget. In its recent report, Mr. Frank's task force - the Sustainable Defense Task Force - concluded that the Pentagon could cut $960 billion between 2011 and 2020 without harming essential security. The president's deficit commission must do the same. The military budget is 20 percent of federal spending and 50 percent of discretionary spending. There is no way to address the deficit without deeper cuts in defense spending.
Citation: "Mr. Gates Makes a Start," editorial, New York Times, 14 August 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15sun1.html
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06 September 2010
Editorial: Military can take cuts
Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 August 2012
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' plan to curb military spending is a needed step, but Congress should work on cutting the Pentagon's budget even further.
Gates on Monday laid out a specific proposal to trim defense spending by $100 billion over the next five years. Among the cuts, he'd eliminate a military command in Norfolk, Va., and shrink the number of private contractors who are paid by the Pentagon.
Saving $100 billion is nothing to shrug at. And Gates should get credit for trying to reduce administrative costs without harming the nation's fighting ability.
But his proposals represent a small dent in defense spending, which has soared in the past decade. Even with Gates' proposed reductions, overall military spending would rise an average of 1 percent per year above inflation.
Given the country's massive deficits, defense should be targeted for overall reductions instead of slower growth. The long-term budget picture is gloomy, and sacrifice will be needed from every corner of the government's operations.
President Obama hasn't seen it that way, yet. He's asked Congress to boost defense spending next year, from $535 billion to $549 billion. And that staggering sum doesn't include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which bring the total to $708 billion - about 6 percent more than the highest spending levels under former President George W. Bush.
In the past decade, defense spending has increased an average of 7 percent annually above inflation. Much of that increase is due to the two wars that followed the 9/11 attacks, but there also has been growth in bureaucracy. For example, the defense secretary's office alone has added about 1,000 employees in the past 10 years, an increase of about 50 percent.
Cutting the military budget means cutting jobs, which will be difficult even for a Pentagon chief with Gates' credibility. Already this week, elected officials in Virginia are coming out against these proposed reductions.
Too often, lawmakers try to save defense programs in their own backyards when even the military doesn't want them. Gates has been waging this battle valiantly under Republican and Democratic administrations.
Gates is trying to control military spending by striking first with his proposed cuts. Otherwise, he fears that deficits and the ongoing withdrawal of troops from Iraq will spur some Democratic lawmakers to make deeper cuts without the same level of care that Gates has taken.
Citation: Military can take cuts, editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 August 2012. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20100811_Editorial__Military_can_take_cuts.html
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' plan to curb military spending is a needed step, but Congress should work on cutting the Pentagon's budget even further.
Gates on Monday laid out a specific proposal to trim defense spending by $100 billion over the next five years. Among the cuts, he'd eliminate a military command in Norfolk, Va., and shrink the number of private contractors who are paid by the Pentagon.
Saving $100 billion is nothing to shrug at. And Gates should get credit for trying to reduce administrative costs without harming the nation's fighting ability.
But his proposals represent a small dent in defense spending, which has soared in the past decade. Even with Gates' proposed reductions, overall military spending would rise an average of 1 percent per year above inflation.
Given the country's massive deficits, defense should be targeted for overall reductions instead of slower growth. The long-term budget picture is gloomy, and sacrifice will be needed from every corner of the government's operations.
President Obama hasn't seen it that way, yet. He's asked Congress to boost defense spending next year, from $535 billion to $549 billion. And that staggering sum doesn't include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which bring the total to $708 billion - about 6 percent more than the highest spending levels under former President George W. Bush.
In the past decade, defense spending has increased an average of 7 percent annually above inflation. Much of that increase is due to the two wars that followed the 9/11 attacks, but there also has been growth in bureaucracy. For example, the defense secretary's office alone has added about 1,000 employees in the past 10 years, an increase of about 50 percent.
Cutting the military budget means cutting jobs, which will be difficult even for a Pentagon chief with Gates' credibility. Already this week, elected officials in Virginia are coming out against these proposed reductions.
Too often, lawmakers try to save defense programs in their own backyards when even the military doesn't want them. Gates has been waging this battle valiantly under Republican and Democratic administrations.
Gates is trying to control military spending by striking first with his proposed cuts. Otherwise, he fears that deficits and the ongoing withdrawal of troops from Iraq will spur some Democratic lawmakers to make deeper cuts without the same level of care that Gates has taken.
Citation: Military can take cuts, editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 August 2012. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20100811_Editorial__Military_can_take_cuts.html
Time to get tough on defense spending
Katrina vanden Heuvel,
Washington Post, 22 June 2010
With the fixation on shrinking the budget deficit, why is over $700 billion in annual defense spending almost always off-limits for discussion? The mainstream media rarely explore possible cuts in the nation's largest discretionary spending item, and most politicians refuse to even consider the issue.
That's why the bipartisan Sustainable Defense Task Force's June 11 report recommending over $1 trillion in Pentagon cuts over the next 10 years is an indication that some sanity might arrive inside the Beltway. Convened by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) -- who raised this issue in an early-2009 op-ed for The Nation -- along with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Republican Reps. Ron Paul (Texas) and Walter Jones (N.C.), the task force not only sheds light on how to find needed revenues but also suggests a new national security framework for the 21st century. Some of the report's big-ticket items for savings over a 10-year period include $113 billion by reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal; $200 billion by reducing U.S. military presence abroad and total uniformed military personnel; $138 billion by replacing unworkable, costly weapons systems with better alternatives; and $100 billion by cutting unnecessary command, support and infrastructure funding.
But, the report argues, "significant savings" may depend on rethinking "our national security commitments and goals to ensure they focus clearly on what concerns us the most." It goes on to describe "a strategy of restraint -- one that reacts to danger rather than going out in search of it.... We need not stick around in foreign lands often. "Our military budget should be sized to defend us. For this end, we do not need to spend $700 billion a year -- or anything close. We can be safe for much less, provided that we capitalize on our geopolitical fortune. Our principal enemy, al-Qaeda, has no army, no air force, and no navy . . . . The hunt for anti-American terrorists is mostly an intelligence and policing task."
A reorientation of security policy will not come easily in light of what Nation reporter Ari Berman calls "the strategic class" -- the hawkish Democratic foreign policy advisers, the neocons, the think-tank specialists and pundits who abound in Washington and crowd out alternative policies and arguments. Lobbyists for defense contractors with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake are also formidable opponents to change.
This narrowing of options is abetted by a mainstream media that offer little exposure to new security ideas -- generated by groups left, right and center, inside and outside of Washington -- that challenge the status quo. Indeed, few in the media have covered the task force's report. Add to that mix the oft-used argument -- especially potent in an economy with double-digit unemployment -- that defense cuts are a jobs killer, and the prospect for the broader debate Americans need and deserve are dim. Defense spending, however, is one of the worst ways to create jobs per dollar spent. It makes far more sense to cut an increasingly bloated Pentagon budget than to reduce much-needed investment in jobs, clean energy, transportation and support for state and local governments, all of which stimulate the economy much more efficiently and contribute more to our national recovery.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tried to eliminate a few weapons programs. But, so far, he has mostly moved money from one weapons program to another. Making significant cuts in defense spending will demand more than just trimming unnecessary weapons programs and eliminating Pentagon waste and fraud. It will require rethinking our role in the world, as the task force report suggests. Is America Globocop or responsible Republic? As Globocop, we have spent over $1 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Isn't it time we had an honest and open debate on that question?
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and writes a weekly column for The Post.
Citation: Katrina vanden Heuvel, "Time to get tough on defense spending," Washington Post, 22 June 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/22/AR2010062201999.html
Washington Post, 22 June 2010
With the fixation on shrinking the budget deficit, why is over $700 billion in annual defense spending almost always off-limits for discussion? The mainstream media rarely explore possible cuts in the nation's largest discretionary spending item, and most politicians refuse to even consider the issue.
That's why the bipartisan Sustainable Defense Task Force's June 11 report recommending over $1 trillion in Pentagon cuts over the next 10 years is an indication that some sanity might arrive inside the Beltway. Convened by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) -- who raised this issue in an early-2009 op-ed for The Nation -- along with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Republican Reps. Ron Paul (Texas) and Walter Jones (N.C.), the task force not only sheds light on how to find needed revenues but also suggests a new national security framework for the 21st century. Some of the report's big-ticket items for savings over a 10-year period include $113 billion by reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal; $200 billion by reducing U.S. military presence abroad and total uniformed military personnel; $138 billion by replacing unworkable, costly weapons systems with better alternatives; and $100 billion by cutting unnecessary command, support and infrastructure funding.
But, the report argues, "significant savings" may depend on rethinking "our national security commitments and goals to ensure they focus clearly on what concerns us the most." It goes on to describe "a strategy of restraint -- one that reacts to danger rather than going out in search of it.... We need not stick around in foreign lands often. "Our military budget should be sized to defend us. For this end, we do not need to spend $700 billion a year -- or anything close. We can be safe for much less, provided that we capitalize on our geopolitical fortune. Our principal enemy, al-Qaeda, has no army, no air force, and no navy . . . . The hunt for anti-American terrorists is mostly an intelligence and policing task."
A reorientation of security policy will not come easily in light of what Nation reporter Ari Berman calls "the strategic class" -- the hawkish Democratic foreign policy advisers, the neocons, the think-tank specialists and pundits who abound in Washington and crowd out alternative policies and arguments. Lobbyists for defense contractors with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake are also formidable opponents to change.
This narrowing of options is abetted by a mainstream media that offer little exposure to new security ideas -- generated by groups left, right and center, inside and outside of Washington -- that challenge the status quo. Indeed, few in the media have covered the task force's report. Add to that mix the oft-used argument -- especially potent in an economy with double-digit unemployment -- that defense cuts are a jobs killer, and the prospect for the broader debate Americans need and deserve are dim. Defense spending, however, is one of the worst ways to create jobs per dollar spent. It makes far more sense to cut an increasingly bloated Pentagon budget than to reduce much-needed investment in jobs, clean energy, transportation and support for state and local governments, all of which stimulate the economy much more efficiently and contribute more to our national recovery.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tried to eliminate a few weapons programs. But, so far, he has mostly moved money from one weapons program to another. Making significant cuts in defense spending will demand more than just trimming unnecessary weapons programs and eliminating Pentagon waste and fraud. It will require rethinking our role in the world, as the task force report suggests. Is America Globocop or responsible Republic? As Globocop, we have spent over $1 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Isn't it time we had an honest and open debate on that question?
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and writes a weekly column for The Post.
Citation: Katrina vanden Heuvel, "Time to get tough on defense spending," Washington Post, 22 June 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/22/AR2010062201999.html
Defense Spending: I'm a hawk, but give me a break
Thomas E. Ricks,
ForeignPolicy.com, 22 December 2009
I believe in a strong national defense. But I don't think buying jets, ships, and anti-missile systems is necessarily the best way to improve the nation's security right now. In the long term, one of the best ways to make the country strong is to spend more on national infrastructure and especially education. Without the GI Bill, my father probably wouldn't have gotten to college. As it happened, he wound up going from growing up poor in rural Wyoming to teaching at Harvard.
I also understand that military operations are expensive. Got it. I want to support soldiers, give them what they need. I am all for building day care centers on military bases and buying good body armor. I can even live with $1.2 billion being given to combat commanders for CERP money (i.e., "walking around money").
But there is a whole lot of defense spending that simply stuns me. Here are a few examples from the current FY 2010 defense appropriations bill:
ForeignPolicy.com, 22 December 2009
I believe in a strong national defense. But I don't think buying jets, ships, and anti-missile systems is necessarily the best way to improve the nation's security right now. In the long term, one of the best ways to make the country strong is to spend more on national infrastructure and especially education. Without the GI Bill, my father probably wouldn't have gotten to college. As it happened, he wound up going from growing up poor in rural Wyoming to teaching at Harvard.
I also understand that military operations are expensive. Got it. I want to support soldiers, give them what they need. I am all for building day care centers on military bases and buying good body armor. I can even live with $1.2 billion being given to combat commanders for CERP money (i.e., "walking around money").
But there is a whole lot of defense spending that simply stuns me. Here are a few examples from the current FY 2010 defense appropriations bill:
- $4.4 billion for two Navy destroyers and one littoral combat ship. Yow. Maybe it is time to start buying warships from South Korea, or at least invite competitive bids? Folks, this is billions, not millions. Imagine what $4.4 billion could do to rebuild our highways, or send deserving kids to college, or rebuild New Orleans.
- $2.6 billion for V-22 aircraft for the Marines and Air Force. I wish the Marines had just gone with the UH-60 Black Hawk two decades ago. Now the Marines have dug a hole that is killing the rest of their aviation. It makes me wonder whether the Marines, the smallest of the armed forces, should be in the business of technology innovation.
- $1 billion for Navy F-18s. Lots of money for an airplane that is, well, yeeehh. Better spent on unmanned combat aircraft?This list makes me wonder just how out of touch with the country's economy our military leaders are. This makes it more understandable how they could think that that the scandal over triple-dipping generals being paid millions of dollars to "mentor" is no biggie.
Military money pit
Joshua Green,
Boston Globe, 17 June 2010
Brooding over the deficit is Washington's civil religion, and as the budget gap exploded over the last two years, we've witnessed a revival. From the Tea Party to the White House, the deficit is a driving concern. Fear of adding to it has thwarted Democratic efforts at another stimulus. Anger over it could determine who controls Congress. No force in politics is more powerful.
So it's odd that the largest category of discretionary spending has largely escaped scrutiny: military spending. In January, when President Obama proposed a three-year freeze in discretionary spending, he pointedly exempted the military. Last week, a bipartisan group of legislators and policy experts asked an important question: Why?
The group, The Sustainable Defense Task Force, encompasses the political spectrum - from Barney Frank, on the left, to Ron Paul, on the right - along with a host of military reformers. They share a belief that unrestrained military spending is a danger to the budget, and to the country. And they make a persuasive case that we can spend less without sacrificing security.
Today, the United States spends more on its military than during the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union no longer poses a threat, yet we continue to spend huge sums protecting countries in Europe and Asia. This defense subsidy allows Europeans to provide a level of social welfare far in excess of what the United States offers its citizens. If Germany, France, and Britain bore more of their own defense costs, US tax dollars could go elsewhere, or nowhere.
Overpriced, underperforming weapons systems are a hardy Washington perennial also ripe for the cutting. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the V-22 Osprey - all identified as potential cost savings in the task force report - have been targeted by reformers for years. No less a hawk than Dick Cheney has pronounced the V-22 "a turkey.'' That we continue paying for these weapons makes even less sense now that terrorists, not communists, are the enemy.
This sorry state of affairs persists mainly for two reasons. Presidents rarely confront it: Republicans like to spend money on the military, and Democrats are afraid not to. "For years,'' Frank said, "the major obstacle to a Democrat winning the presidency was being seen as soft on defense. That's why Mike Dukakis put on that helmet and got in a tank.''
The other reason is that Congress tends to think about boondoggle weapons systems in the context of jobs, not deficits. Killing a turkey is viewed as eliminating a major employer. (Last month, Frank voted over the objections of the defense secretary to fund a duplicate F-35 engine built in Lynn, but says he'd kill the fighter altogether if it came to a vote.) So we still buy useless weapons, over the protests of reformers and defense officials.
That kind of backward thinking could start to change. Bringing the deficit under control is a zero-sum game. Eventually, we'll have to raise taxes and cut spending. As budget pressure grows, the nearly $1 trillion in military cuts proposed by the task force could look appealing. One way of getting this done is through the president's Deficit Reduction Commission, which will recommend a package of cuts to Congress in December for an up-or-down vote. The Sustainable Defense Task Force is lobbying the commission to do what Obama wouldn't: consider military cuts, and in the context of the entire federal budget. Members like Frank and Paul say they'll vote against any package that doesn't, and encourage congressional colleagues to do likewise.
Obama speaks often about overcoming old ways of thinking, but he chooses his fights carefully. He's ducked this one for now. But it's hard to see why he'd maintain the Democrats' defensive crouch, especially when military spending cuts would achieve two things he holds dear. First, it would demonstrate that he's serious about deficit cutting, which might free him and his party from their political stricture. Second, it would give him an opportunity to cooperate with Republicans, and not just moderates, but true deficit hawks like Paul. Targeting wasteful military spending - like, say, those subsidies to the French - might even channel Tea Party anger over government spending toward a productive purpose.
Joshua Green is senior editor of The Atlantic. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
Citation: Joshua Green, "Military money pit," Boston Globe, 17 June 2010. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/17/the_military_money_pit/
Boston Globe, 17 June 2010
Brooding over the deficit is Washington's civil religion, and as the budget gap exploded over the last two years, we've witnessed a revival. From the Tea Party to the White House, the deficit is a driving concern. Fear of adding to it has thwarted Democratic efforts at another stimulus. Anger over it could determine who controls Congress. No force in politics is more powerful.
So it's odd that the largest category of discretionary spending has largely escaped scrutiny: military spending. In January, when President Obama proposed a three-year freeze in discretionary spending, he pointedly exempted the military. Last week, a bipartisan group of legislators and policy experts asked an important question: Why?
The group, The Sustainable Defense Task Force, encompasses the political spectrum - from Barney Frank, on the left, to Ron Paul, on the right - along with a host of military reformers. They share a belief that unrestrained military spending is a danger to the budget, and to the country. And they make a persuasive case that we can spend less without sacrificing security.
Today, the United States spends more on its military than during the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union no longer poses a threat, yet we continue to spend huge sums protecting countries in Europe and Asia. This defense subsidy allows Europeans to provide a level of social welfare far in excess of what the United States offers its citizens. If Germany, France, and Britain bore more of their own defense costs, US tax dollars could go elsewhere, or nowhere.
Overpriced, underperforming weapons systems are a hardy Washington perennial also ripe for the cutting. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the V-22 Osprey - all identified as potential cost savings in the task force report - have been targeted by reformers for years. No less a hawk than Dick Cheney has pronounced the V-22 "a turkey.'' That we continue paying for these weapons makes even less sense now that terrorists, not communists, are the enemy.
This sorry state of affairs persists mainly for two reasons. Presidents rarely confront it: Republicans like to spend money on the military, and Democrats are afraid not to. "For years,'' Frank said, "the major obstacle to a Democrat winning the presidency was being seen as soft on defense. That's why Mike Dukakis put on that helmet and got in a tank.''
The other reason is that Congress tends to think about boondoggle weapons systems in the context of jobs, not deficits. Killing a turkey is viewed as eliminating a major employer. (Last month, Frank voted over the objections of the defense secretary to fund a duplicate F-35 engine built in Lynn, but says he'd kill the fighter altogether if it came to a vote.) So we still buy useless weapons, over the protests of reformers and defense officials.
That kind of backward thinking could start to change. Bringing the deficit under control is a zero-sum game. Eventually, we'll have to raise taxes and cut spending. As budget pressure grows, the nearly $1 trillion in military cuts proposed by the task force could look appealing. One way of getting this done is through the president's Deficit Reduction Commission, which will recommend a package of cuts to Congress in December for an up-or-down vote. The Sustainable Defense Task Force is lobbying the commission to do what Obama wouldn't: consider military cuts, and in the context of the entire federal budget. Members like Frank and Paul say they'll vote against any package that doesn't, and encourage congressional colleagues to do likewise.
Obama speaks often about overcoming old ways of thinking, but he chooses his fights carefully. He's ducked this one for now. But it's hard to see why he'd maintain the Democrats' defensive crouch, especially when military spending cuts would achieve two things he holds dear. First, it would demonstrate that he's serious about deficit cutting, which might free him and his party from their political stricture. Second, it would give him an opportunity to cooperate with Republicans, and not just moderates, but true deficit hawks like Paul. Targeting wasteful military spending - like, say, those subsidies to the French - might even channel Tea Party anger over government spending toward a productive purpose.
Joshua Green is senior editor of The Atlantic. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
Citation: Joshua Green, "Military money pit," Boston Globe, 17 June 2010. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/17/the_military_money_pit/
Cutting defense spending could be bipartisan objective
Cal Thomas,
Tribune Media syndication, 13 August 2010
CALLOUT: No matter which party controls Congress, members use defense spending to create jobs and do favors for political contributors
As Republicans take their case to the voters in November about the Obama administration's massive overspending and record debt, they should seriously consider what could be a rare bipartisan objective: cutting defense spending.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- a George W. Bush appointee and an Obama holdover -- has announced plans to reduce what he calls the "cumbersome" American military hierarchy. Gates also wants to cut spending by more than one-quarter on support contractors and close the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., which, according to the Washington Post, "employs about 2,800 military and civilian personnel as well as 3,300 contractors, most of them in southeastern Virginia."
Gates' proposal got the attention of Sen. James Webb, D-Va., and Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell. Closing a national security facility would cost jobs, and Virginia, which recently announced a budget surplus and houses the Pentagon and other military venues, doesn't want to regress.
It is one of Washington's major embarrassments that no matter which party controls Congress, members use defense spending to create jobs and do favors for political contributors in their states and districts. But like the bipartisan Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, which operated through Republican and Democratic administrations and resulted in the closing of 350 outdated military bases, a similar approach to cutting unnecessary defense spending might also produce benefits to taxpayers.
The problem has been that the Left too often wants to cut defense for its own antiwar and political agenda and the Right thinks all defense spending is good and to cut it is unpatriotic. So how about starting with the most outrageous and unnecessary spending, which should make harder cuts a little easier?
Citizens Against Government Waste (www.cagw.org) offers some useful places to begin. In the 2010 defense budget, "$3.385 billion was added anonymously for four projects. According to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, signed into law on Sept. 14, 2007 by President George W. Bush, members of Congress are required to add their name to each earmark. However, they continue to violate this law by adding anonymous earmarks to fund projects -- often big-ticket items -- at the expense of taxpayers."
Citizens Against Government Waste (www.cagw.org) offers some useful places to begin. In the 2010 defense budget, "$3.385 billion was added anonymously for four projects. According to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, signed into law on Sept. 14, 2007 by President George W. Bush, members of Congress are required to add their name to each earmark. However, they continue to violate this law by adding anonymous earmarks to fund projects -- often big-ticket items -- at the expense of taxpayers."
Why can't Congress live under laws it passes to regulate itself?
Another anonymous earmark for $250 million was added, "For advance procurement of components for the two DDG-51 destroyers planned in fiscal year 2011. According to a Sept. 29 Associated Press article, the DDG-51 destroyer is "to be built in Pascagoula, Miss., home to Republican Sen. Thad Cochran," ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. "Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., John Kerry, D-Mass., [former Sen.] Paul Kirk, D-Mass. and Rep. Travis Childers, D-Miss., added $8.1 million for a hybrid drive system for the DDG-51 destroyer."
Again anonymously, $2.5 billion was earmarked for "10 additional C-17 aircraft. In a floor statement posted on his Web site, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., voiced his opposition to the C-17 funding: 'What we would do in this bill is effectively fund the purchase of new aircraft that we neither need nor can afford with critical sustainment money. That would have a significant impact on our ability to provide the day-to-day operational funding that our servicemen and women and their families deserve.' "
It will take more than spending reductions to make the Pentagon -- and the American economy -- healthy again. Ultimately, the political leadership must develop a policy about the proper role of the United States in the world and what weapons are necessary to fight modern wars against terrorists.
President Obama has said (and so have his predecessors) that he doesn't like the pork in defense bills, but he has to sign what Congress sends him. The least he could do is to shame those members who won't attach their names to spending measures, or who support spending for weapons the Pentagon neither wants, nor needs.
Wasting money on the Department of Defense may strengthen the political careers of politicians, but it weakens our defenses.
Examiner Columnist Cal Thomas is nationally syndicated by Tribune Media.
Citation: Cal Thomas, "Cutting defense spending could be bipartisan objective," Tribune Media syndication, 13 August 2010. http://www.hutchnews.com/Wirecolumns/thomas-column-8-15--1
Tribune Media syndication, 13 August 2010
CALLOUT: No matter which party controls Congress, members use defense spending to create jobs and do favors for political contributors
As Republicans take their case to the voters in November about the Obama administration's massive overspending and record debt, they should seriously consider what could be a rare bipartisan objective: cutting defense spending.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- a George W. Bush appointee and an Obama holdover -- has announced plans to reduce what he calls the "cumbersome" American military hierarchy. Gates also wants to cut spending by more than one-quarter on support contractors and close the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., which, according to the Washington Post, "employs about 2,800 military and civilian personnel as well as 3,300 contractors, most of them in southeastern Virginia."
Gates' proposal got the attention of Sen. James Webb, D-Va., and Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell. Closing a national security facility would cost jobs, and Virginia, which recently announced a budget surplus and houses the Pentagon and other military venues, doesn't want to regress.
It is one of Washington's major embarrassments that no matter which party controls Congress, members use defense spending to create jobs and do favors for political contributors in their states and districts. But like the bipartisan Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, which operated through Republican and Democratic administrations and resulted in the closing of 350 outdated military bases, a similar approach to cutting unnecessary defense spending might also produce benefits to taxpayers.
The problem has been that the Left too often wants to cut defense for its own antiwar and political agenda and the Right thinks all defense spending is good and to cut it is unpatriotic. So how about starting with the most outrageous and unnecessary spending, which should make harder cuts a little easier?
Citizens Against Government Waste (www.cagw.org) offers some useful places to begin. In the 2010 defense budget, "$3.385 billion was added anonymously for four projects. According to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, signed into law on Sept. 14, 2007 by President George W. Bush, members of Congress are required to add their name to each earmark. However, they continue to violate this law by adding anonymous earmarks to fund projects -- often big-ticket items -- at the expense of taxpayers."
Citizens Against Government Waste (www.cagw.org) offers some useful places to begin. In the 2010 defense budget, "$3.385 billion was added anonymously for four projects. According to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, signed into law on Sept. 14, 2007 by President George W. Bush, members of Congress are required to add their name to each earmark. However, they continue to violate this law by adding anonymous earmarks to fund projects -- often big-ticket items -- at the expense of taxpayers."
Why can't Congress live under laws it passes to regulate itself?
Another anonymous earmark for $250 million was added, "For advance procurement of components for the two DDG-51 destroyers planned in fiscal year 2011. According to a Sept. 29 Associated Press article, the DDG-51 destroyer is "to be built in Pascagoula, Miss., home to Republican Sen. Thad Cochran," ranking member on the Appropriations Committee. "Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., John Kerry, D-Mass., [former Sen.] Paul Kirk, D-Mass. and Rep. Travis Childers, D-Miss., added $8.1 million for a hybrid drive system for the DDG-51 destroyer."
Again anonymously, $2.5 billion was earmarked for "10 additional C-17 aircraft. In a floor statement posted on his Web site, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., voiced his opposition to the C-17 funding: 'What we would do in this bill is effectively fund the purchase of new aircraft that we neither need nor can afford with critical sustainment money. That would have a significant impact on our ability to provide the day-to-day operational funding that our servicemen and women and their families deserve.' "
It will take more than spending reductions to make the Pentagon -- and the American economy -- healthy again. Ultimately, the political leadership must develop a policy about the proper role of the United States in the world and what weapons are necessary to fight modern wars against terrorists.
President Obama has said (and so have his predecessors) that he doesn't like the pork in defense bills, but he has to sign what Congress sends him. The least he could do is to shame those members who won't attach their names to spending measures, or who support spending for weapons the Pentagon neither wants, nor needs.
Wasting money on the Department of Defense may strengthen the political careers of politicians, but it weakens our defenses.
Examiner Columnist Cal Thomas is nationally syndicated by Tribune Media.
Citation: Cal Thomas, "Cutting defense spending could be bipartisan objective," Tribune Media syndication, 13 August 2010. http://www.hutchnews.com/Wirecolumns/thomas-column-8-15--1
Get ready for another debate over pegging defense spending to GDP
Josh Rogin
FoeignPolicy.com, 27 August 2010
In the raging debate over defense spending, there's one argument proponents of larger defense budgets have been pushing for years. They believe defense spending should be pegged to a fixed percentage of America's annual gross domestic product.
But for those who advocate for defense budget reform, the logic of tying the amount of money the United States spends on national security to the performance of the civilian economy has never been clear. Defense spending should be based on the perceived threats and what's needed to combat them, critics of this approach argue. Moreover, they say, the GDP figure is simply not a good measure of what the government can afford, considering the massive national debt and various other pressures on the overall budget.
"Why the number of tanks and ships the Pentagon buys should be tied to the number of Big Mac meals sold at McDonald's is a complete mystery to me," said Winslow Wheeler, the director of the Strauss Military Reform project at the Center for Defense Information.
The Office of Management and Budget's director for national security spending Steve Kosiak, in his prior role as vice president at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, once said that "there is no analytical basis" whatsoever for pegging defense spending to GDP.
In other words, the argument for pegging defense spending to GDP is simply an effort to ensure that defense budgets keep rising in perpetuity. As entitlement spending puts more pressure on the budget, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, military leaders and their congressional allies are concerned that competition for federal dollars will grow. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen have come out in support of a peg.
They argue that the country can afford it, especially when compared with defense spending as a share of GDP during past conflicts: 13-14 percent during the Korean War, 7-9 percent during the Vietnam War, and 37-38 percent during World War II.
A debate over the peg concept erupts each year in Congress. Last year Rep. Trent Franks, R-AZ and Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, introduced a joint resolution that would require the defense base budget to equal 4 percent of GDP, at a minimum. Democrats routinely reject the idea.
"I find absolutely no logic whatsoever in using [the 4 percent] number as a starting point," said Democrat Dave Loebsack of Iowa, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, at the time. "I don't think it makes any difference what percent of our GDP was devoted to the military in 1953."
Expect the debate to heat up again this budget season. Gates is already preemptively defending the defense budget against congressional attempts to cut it and the president's debt commission is looking at the defense allocation as well.
For fiscal 2010, the Department of Defense requested $533.8 billion in regular funding, or 3.6 percent of an estimated GDP of $14.6 trillion, according to OMB figures. By 2015, the Pentagon would have to request $764 billion in defense funding, not including the wars, to get to a number that will equal 4 percent of what OMB estimates will be a $19.2 trillion GDP that year. And what if GDP doesn't rise as quickly as predicted or even goes down? Would defense budgets tied to GDP then stay flat or go down as well?
Today, the Commerce Department slashed its estimate of second quarter GDP growth from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent. Technically, this would mean that defense spending had instantly increased as a share of GDP, even though not one more dollar for defense was actually given, Wheeler pointed out.
"The advocates of using share of GDP to measure the adequacy of our defenses are surely celebrating this improvement in the nation's security," said Wheeler. "All others should, of course, feel safer. Don't you?"
Citation: Josh Rogin, "Get ready for another debate over pegging defense spending to GDP," FoeignPolicy.com, 27 August 2010. http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/27/get_ready_for_another_debate_over_pegging_defense_spending_to_gdp
FoeignPolicy.com, 27 August 2010
In the raging debate over defense spending, there's one argument proponents of larger defense budgets have been pushing for years. They believe defense spending should be pegged to a fixed percentage of America's annual gross domestic product.
But for those who advocate for defense budget reform, the logic of tying the amount of money the United States spends on national security to the performance of the civilian economy has never been clear. Defense spending should be based on the perceived threats and what's needed to combat them, critics of this approach argue. Moreover, they say, the GDP figure is simply not a good measure of what the government can afford, considering the massive national debt and various other pressures on the overall budget.
"Why the number of tanks and ships the Pentagon buys should be tied to the number of Big Mac meals sold at McDonald's is a complete mystery to me," said Winslow Wheeler, the director of the Strauss Military Reform project at the Center for Defense Information.
The Office of Management and Budget's director for national security spending Steve Kosiak, in his prior role as vice president at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, once said that "there is no analytical basis" whatsoever for pegging defense spending to GDP.
In other words, the argument for pegging defense spending to GDP is simply an effort to ensure that defense budgets keep rising in perpetuity. As entitlement spending puts more pressure on the budget, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, military leaders and their congressional allies are concerned that competition for federal dollars will grow. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen have come out in support of a peg.
They argue that the country can afford it, especially when compared with defense spending as a share of GDP during past conflicts: 13-14 percent during the Korean War, 7-9 percent during the Vietnam War, and 37-38 percent during World War II.
A debate over the peg concept erupts each year in Congress. Last year Rep. Trent Franks, R-AZ and Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, introduced a joint resolution that would require the defense base budget to equal 4 percent of GDP, at a minimum. Democrats routinely reject the idea.
"I find absolutely no logic whatsoever in using [the 4 percent] number as a starting point," said Democrat Dave Loebsack of Iowa, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, at the time. "I don't think it makes any difference what percent of our GDP was devoted to the military in 1953."
Expect the debate to heat up again this budget season. Gates is already preemptively defending the defense budget against congressional attempts to cut it and the president's debt commission is looking at the defense allocation as well.
For fiscal 2010, the Department of Defense requested $533.8 billion in regular funding, or 3.6 percent of an estimated GDP of $14.6 trillion, according to OMB figures. By 2015, the Pentagon would have to request $764 billion in defense funding, not including the wars, to get to a number that will equal 4 percent of what OMB estimates will be a $19.2 trillion GDP that year. And what if GDP doesn't rise as quickly as predicted or even goes down? Would defense budgets tied to GDP then stay flat or go down as well?
Today, the Commerce Department slashed its estimate of second quarter GDP growth from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent. Technically, this would mean that defense spending had instantly increased as a share of GDP, even though not one more dollar for defense was actually given, Wheeler pointed out.
"The advocates of using share of GDP to measure the adequacy of our defenses are surely celebrating this improvement in the nation's security," said Wheeler. "All others should, of course, feel safer. Don't you?"
Citation: Josh Rogin, "Get ready for another debate over pegging defense spending to GDP," FoeignPolicy.com, 27 August 2010. http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/27/get_ready_for_another_debate_over_pegging_defense_spending_to_gdp
Why we must reduce military spending
Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas)
Huffington Post, 6 July 2010
As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.
By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion - more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.
It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.
We are not talking about cutting the money needed to supply American troops in the field. Once we send our men and women into battle, even in cases where we may have opposed going to war, we have an obligation to make sure that our service members have everything they need. And we are not talking about cutting essential funds for combating terrorism; we must do everything possible to prevent any recurrence of the mass murder of Americans that took place on September 11, 2001.
Immediately after World War II, with much of the world devastated and the Soviet Union becoming increasingly aggressive, America took on the responsibility of protecting virtually every country that asked for it. Sixty-five years later, we continue to play that role long after there is any justification for it, and currently American military spending makes up approximately 44% of all such expenditures worldwide. The nations of Western Europe now collectively have greater resources at their command than we do, yet they continue to depend overwhelmingly on American taxpayers to provide for their defense. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism. Europeans have benefitted from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella."
When our democratic allies are menaced by larger, hostile powers, there is a strong argument to be made for supporting them. But the notion that American taxpayers get some benefit from extending our military might worldwide is deeply flawed. And the idea that as a superpower it is our duty to maintain stability by intervening in civil disorders virtually anywhere in the world often generates anger directed at us and may in the end do more harm than good.
We believe that the time has come for a much quicker withdrawal from Iraq than the President has proposed. We both voted against that war, but even for those who voted for it, there can be no justification for spending over $700 billion dollars of American taxpayers' money on direct military spending in Iraq since the war began, not including the massive, estimated long-term costs of the war. We have essentially taken on a referee role in a civil war, even mediating electoral disputes.
In order to create a systematic approach to reducing military spending, we have convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force consisting of experts on military expenditures that span the ideological spectrum. The task force has produced a detailed report with specific recommendations for cutting Pentagon spending by approximately $1 trillion over a ten year period. It calls for eliminating certain Cold War weapons and scaling back our commitments overseas. Even with these changes, the United States would still be immeasurably stronger than any nation with which we might be engaged, and the plan will in fact enhance our security rather than diminish it.
We are currently working to enlist the support of other members of Congress for our initiative. Along with our colleagues Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Walter Jones, we have addressed a letter to the President's National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which he has convened to develop concrete recommendations for reducing the budget deficit. We will make it clear to leaders of both parties that substantial reductions in military spending must be included in any future deficit reduction package. We pledge to oppose any proposal that fails to do so.
In the short term, rebuilding our economy and creating jobs will remain our nation's top priority. But it is essential that we begin to address the issue of excessive military spending in order to ensure prosperity in the future. We may not agree on what to do with the estimated $1 trillion in savings, but we do agree that nothing either of us cares deeply about will be possible if we do not begin to face this issue now.
Citation: Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), “Why we must reduce military spending,” Huffington Post, 6 July 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barney-frank/why-we-must-reduce-milita_b_636051.html
Huffington Post, 6 July 2010
As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.
By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion - more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.
It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.
We are not talking about cutting the money needed to supply American troops in the field. Once we send our men and women into battle, even in cases where we may have opposed going to war, we have an obligation to make sure that our service members have everything they need. And we are not talking about cutting essential funds for combating terrorism; we must do everything possible to prevent any recurrence of the mass murder of Americans that took place on September 11, 2001.
Immediately after World War II, with much of the world devastated and the Soviet Union becoming increasingly aggressive, America took on the responsibility of protecting virtually every country that asked for it. Sixty-five years later, we continue to play that role long after there is any justification for it, and currently American military spending makes up approximately 44% of all such expenditures worldwide. The nations of Western Europe now collectively have greater resources at their command than we do, yet they continue to depend overwhelmingly on American taxpayers to provide for their defense. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism. Europeans have benefitted from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella."
When our democratic allies are menaced by larger, hostile powers, there is a strong argument to be made for supporting them. But the notion that American taxpayers get some benefit from extending our military might worldwide is deeply flawed. And the idea that as a superpower it is our duty to maintain stability by intervening in civil disorders virtually anywhere in the world often generates anger directed at us and may in the end do more harm than good.
We believe that the time has come for a much quicker withdrawal from Iraq than the President has proposed. We both voted against that war, but even for those who voted for it, there can be no justification for spending over $700 billion dollars of American taxpayers' money on direct military spending in Iraq since the war began, not including the massive, estimated long-term costs of the war. We have essentially taken on a referee role in a civil war, even mediating electoral disputes.
In order to create a systematic approach to reducing military spending, we have convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force consisting of experts on military expenditures that span the ideological spectrum. The task force has produced a detailed report with specific recommendations for cutting Pentagon spending by approximately $1 trillion over a ten year period. It calls for eliminating certain Cold War weapons and scaling back our commitments overseas. Even with these changes, the United States would still be immeasurably stronger than any nation with which we might be engaged, and the plan will in fact enhance our security rather than diminish it.
We are currently working to enlist the support of other members of Congress for our initiative. Along with our colleagues Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Walter Jones, we have addressed a letter to the President's National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which he has convened to develop concrete recommendations for reducing the budget deficit. We will make it clear to leaders of both parties that substantial reductions in military spending must be included in any future deficit reduction package. We pledge to oppose any proposal that fails to do so.
In the short term, rebuilding our economy and creating jobs will remain our nation's top priority. But it is essential that we begin to address the issue of excessive military spending in order to ensure prosperity in the future. We may not agree on what to do with the estimated $1 trillion in savings, but we do agree that nothing either of us cares deeply about will be possible if we do not begin to face this issue now.
Citation: Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), “Why we must reduce military spending,” Huffington Post, 6 July 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barney-frank/why-we-must-reduce-milita_b_636051.html
America’s Fiscal Defense Crisis
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Defense Industry Daily, 27 May 2010
Memo submitted to the USA's current National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
This memorandum describes what I believe are serious problems in our defense budget and some ideas to address them. I appreciate that some of these thoughts are controversial - even to the point that I have some reluctance in suggesting them. However, if we are to fulfill our mandate, we must make some difficult choices, not just recommend that others do so. In other cases, such as exacting financial accountability from the Department of Defense, I believe we all can agree. Indeed, without our adopting controversial, but vitally important, ideas, I fear we cannot achieve our mandate.
Despite the sacrifice, heroism, and professionalism that our military personnel have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's defenses have been decaying, despite - perhaps even because of - increasing budgets. The ongoing corrosion and growing expense have been with us for decades, and span numerous presidents and political parties. Our Commission affords us an opportunity to start some very late due diligence on national defense spending. If these reforms are taken without the usual forms of compromise that always seem to occur - and prevailing practices that corrode our defenses are truly discarded - a stronger American military will result.
What Problems?
As Stephen Daggett from the Congressional Research service noted in an earlier discretionary working group meeting, total Pentagon spending is higher today - in inflation-adjusted ("constant") dollars than at any time during the last 60 years. This includes the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Defense Department spending during President Regan's administration.
Not counting the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the "base" Pentagon budget has increased from $407 billion in 2001 to $553 billion for 2011 in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the newest US defense budget data. Over the past decade, this means a cumulative total increase of almost $1 Trillion for the base DOD budget.[1]
The current DOD plan is to make the Air Force even smaller, at dramatically increased procurement costs. The Navy has a draft shipbuilding plan to marginally increase the fleet from 287 ships to just over 300, but only if shipbuilding budgets are increased by 30 percent or more. Meanwhile current plans to "upgrade" naval aviation mean a smaller force than we had during the 1990s but at a cost of more than quadrupling spending for naval combat aircraft. The Army is spending up to $88 billion to increase its core active duty combat brigades from 38 to just 42.[6]
Aging Forces: At the same time, major hardware inventories have actually grown older, on average. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), among others, major categories of military equipment are aging in an unprecedented manner. CBO data also shows us that the DOD plan in many major hardware categories is for this problem to grow worse - assuming no further cost growth or schedule delay in each program. While cost of the high operating tempos for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have exacerbated this trend, it predates those wars and would be worsening even without them.[7]
For waging conventional war, the new weapons we buy to replace old ones increase in cost far faster than the budget increases (which makes inevitable the shrinking and aging of our weapons, at growing cost). Also, the new systems rarely, if ever, bring a performance improvement commensurate with the cost increase. In some cases the new system is even a step backwards. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's close air support capability is a good example.
Among the aircraft it is to replace is the 1970s vintage - but still much used and almost universally praised - A-10 close air support aircraft. Even if the F-35 stays at its currently stated purchase price of $131 million per aircraft it will cost almost nine times more than an A-10, using inflation adjusted dollars.[8] At that huge additional cost, it will have less payload than an A-10; it will not be able to loiter over the battlefield to help troops engaged in combat hour after hour; it will be too fast to be able to find targets independently, and even if it could, it will be too fragile to survive at the low altitude it must fly at to be truly effective, even against the primitive small arms and machinegun defenses terrorists and insurgents can mount. It also lacks the extraordinarily effective 30 mm cannon the A-10 carries, a weapon of astounding lethality against a wide variety of target types, including heavy armor.[9]
Slow and Inflexible Acquisitions: For traditional programs within the acquisition system, the Government Accountability Office has also reported many cases of schedule delays of months and even years are due to the numerous additions of new requirements for weapon systems.[10] For the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, senior military leaders had to go outside the normal acquisition process in order to obtain both body armor and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs).[11] In frustration regarding the acquisition of the MRAP vehicles and other requirements for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself has said that the Pentagon is not on a ‘war’ footing when it comes to budget and acquisitions.[12]
Where Did the Money Go?
Hardware Cost Growth: Since 2001, spending for our shrinking, aging hardware inventory has grown from $75 billion in annual procurement dollars to $113 billion today.[13] The Defense Department's Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) show two types of problems in this increased spending: programs that hugely increase in cost to buy no extra weapons, and programs that hugely increase in cost to buy fewer weapons.[14]
For example:
Pork: Congress added at least $60 billion in pork to post-September, 2001 defense bills.[16] Earmark projects were added without an objective estimate of actual cost, without an independent evaluation of need or efficacy, and without competition.
The budget growth for hardware (as discussed above) is simply unaffordable. The longer we wait to solve the problem, the steeper the cuts must be in both accounts in order to operate at a sustainable rate.
Will Recent Legislation Fix the Problem?
Despite decades of acquisition reform from Congress, the Pentagon, and the think tanks, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) tells us that cost overruns in weapon systems are higher today, in inflation adjusted dollars, than any time since they have been measured. Last year, Congress passed the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. Almost every Member of Congress supported it, along with top Department of Defense managers. The early returns on the enactment of this legislation are not encouraging.
For example, one area of immense focus in the legislation was the goal of obtaining realistic, objectively derived cost estimates for major weapon systems. Despite this emphasis and the rhetoric of top Pentagon management, the new cost estimates for DOD's largest acquisition program, the Joint Strike Fighter, reject much of the work of an independent cost estimating team, known as JET II.[17] As a result, Congress and the Pentagon are locking themselves into a program that will only continue to grow in cost, and yet the Pentagon still plans to spend over $70 billion to purchase 420 Joint Strike Fighters before completing flight testing.[18]
In yet another example of the bill's ineffectual support for another reform (competitive "fly-before-buy" procurement), the Army is also rushing ahead into production its various "spin-offs" from the cancelled - ultra complex, underperforming, high cost growth - Future Combat Systems program. The Army is nonetheless blindly plunging ahead into production of the "spin-offs" despite the DOD operational testing office's finding that they exhibit "notable performance deficiencies."[19]
Fixing the Mess
The single most important step to solving this depressing array of problems is to better understand how the Pentagon spends its money - both historically and prospectively. Without an accurate grasp at the start of a spending program as to its most likely cost, schedule, and performance, how can decision makers understand the future consequences of their actions? Today, an ethic continues to predominate in the Pentagon that consistently paints an inaccurate picture - one that is biased in the same, unrealistic and ultimately unaffordable direction. The errors are not random: actual costs always turn out to be much higher than, sometimes even multiples of, early estimates.
The reason is simple; the Pentagon doesn't know how it spends its money. In a strict financial accountability sense, it doesn't even know if the money is spent. This incomprehensible condition has been documented in hundreds of reports over three decades from both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department's own Inspector General (DOD IG).
In a depressing and little-noticed report, the Pentagon Inspector General reported the following in its "Summary of DOD Office of the Inspector General Audits of Financial Management."[20]
For example, the DOD IG reports that:
If we do not have a system that does not accurately know what its spending history is, and does not know what it is now how can we make a competent, honest estimate of future costs? No failed system can be fixed if it cannot be accurately measured.
And yet, there is no sense of urgency in the Pentagon to do anything about it. Indeed, in the 1990s, we were promised this problem would be solved by 1997. In the early 2000s, we were promised it would be solved by 2007; then 2016; then 2017. Now we are being told 2017 is unrealistic.
It is quite clear that this essential key to controlling spending will not be effectively addressed by a Pentagon left to its own devices.
The overall discussion above suggests a number of ways to control defense costs and ensure the reduced spending brings reform and improves our forces. The summary paragraphs below describe the essence of these ideas; however, it is worth mentioning that riddling such reforms with loopholes and exceptions will only result in yet more business as usual.
1. Begin a crash program to have the Pentagon pass a financial audit
To provide the necessary incentive for a financial audit the "base" Pentagon budget should be frozen in FY2012 at the FY2011 level. Unless and until all major components and all major defense acquisition programs are certified by the Inspector General or an independent public accountant for an unqualified audit opinion, spending for those components and those programs should remain frozen. This freeze should not apply to any spending for direct support of overseas contingency operations or Defense Department personnel and wounded warrior accounts. If the Secretary of Defense or Congress asserts that a freeze will harm the national security of the United States or our troops in combat, funding may be increased but only by equally reducing other Defense Department components or programs.
2. Stop High Cost Growth Acquisition and Reinvest the Savings
No defense acquisition program may progress beyond a very limited number of Low Rate Initial Production items, unless and until the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation has reported to the secretary of defense and Congress that it is effective and suitable and that all planned development and operational testing is complete. There will be no exceptions from this prohibition of "concurrency;" no programs currently being developed in the Department of Defense are exempt, except that during combat operations authorized by Congress. That hardware may be delivered before the completion of operational testing to combat theaters on the direct, written request of the pertinent regional commander. Any immediate savings from the suspension of premature production of incompletely or untested defense programs may be reinvested in expanded production of fully tested defense programs to enlarge operational inventories and reverse inventory aging. For example, the short term savings from the suspension of further F-35 production may be used to purchase additional F-15, F-16, and F-18 aircraft and to refurbish A-10 aircraft which would immediately assist our ground forces in Afghanistan with additional support.
3. End the Pork Process
No line item increase "earmark" in defense spending bills and reports should be allowed without an estimate from CBO of its past, current, and future costs, an evaluation from GAO as to its need and efficacy. Finally no funds for congressional "earmarks" should be obligated unless there is a true full and open competition.
4. Support Military Pay and Benefits but Curtail the Excess
Congress should assess the long term affordability of DOD personnel pay and benefits, including for dependents, retirees, and survivors. Pay and benefits should be reformed to the extent that all such benefits are affordable within a DOD budget that assumes zero real growth for the foreseeable future. One of the areas that should be examined is the massively complicated pay structure built in to the Department of Defense. The layers of complexity involved with administering all the special pays, incentives, and tax benefits have a huge cost on the Defense Department in the area of administrative and human resources costs that do not benefit our troops. Similarly, the Defense Department should determine which benefit programs are valued the most by our servicemen and women to determine if certain prized benefits can be boosted while underutilized and obsolete benefits are phased out. Regarding the sheer number of personnel in the Department, Secretary Gates has also noted that the Department of Defense has far too many headquarters, staff, and bureaucracy that merely create more work for subordinate units.[22] Thorough examination in areas such as these could yield significant savings without any reduction in benefits for our troops and their families.
5. Eliminate Non-Defense Pentagon Spending
The secretary of defense and the director of the Office of Management and Budget should move out of the National Defense budget function any and all spending that does not directly and substantially contribute to the national defense. A list of such activities now within the defense budget includes DOD Medical research for non-combat applications duplicated by the National Institutes of Health, National Guard counter-drug activities duplicated by local police and state-run efforts, and DOD expenses for running grocery stores and other commercial operations.[23]
6. Eliminate End of Year Spending Sprees
Eliminate the current bureaucratic policy that all appropriated funds under unit commander's control must be spent before the end of the fiscal year; permit one-half of such funds retained to be used by local level unit commanders for proven, urgent needs for military readiness ("urgent" to be defined by OMB); the rest to be returned to the Treasury for deficit reduction. Base and unit commanders shall be evaluated on their ability to save such funds, use them for truly urgent readiness needs, and return money to the Treasury. The DOD IG shall be notified of all such retention and use of funds to enable selective audits.
Many other cost-saving and military reform ideas have already been articulated by GAO, CBO, nonprofit think tanks, and others. Given the limited time our commission has to fulfill our duty, I encourage other commission members to examine the numerous recommendations from these organizations.
I strongly believe that we can work together for common-sense ideas that can both reduce wasteful, unnecessary, and duplicative defense spending that does nothing to make our nation safe. I look forward to working with National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform on this momentous task.
Sincerely, Tom A. Coburn, MD, United States Senator
Dr. Tom Coburn is Oklahoma's junior U.S. Senator, serving from 1994 to the present day. He is a member of several Senate committees, including Intelligence, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
End Notes
1. Wheeler, Winslow "Our Shrinking, More Costly Force," Armed Forces Journal, October 2008.
2. See "The Military Balance, 2008," the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.
3. See "The Military Balance, 2008," above and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Yearbook for 2008, and Central Intelligence Agency, "The World Fact Book, 2007."
4. National Defense Budget Estimates for 2011, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), March 2010, p. 114.
5. Gates, Robert, "Navy League Sea-Air Space Exposition, Remarks as Delivered", Gaylord Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland, Monday May 3, 2010.
6. Chapter 10 ("Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck Is Here") and Chapter 11 ("Understand, The Contain America's Out of Control Defense Budget") in "America's Defense Meltdown," Stanford University Press, 2009. See also "Defense Death Spiral," by Franklin C. Spinney, and Spinney's June 2002 testimony to Congress [PDF format].
7. Chapter 10 ("Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck Is Here") and Chapter 11 ("Understand, The Contain America's Out of Control Defense Budget") in "America's Defense Meltdown," Stanford University Press, 2009. See also "Defense Death Spiral," by Franklin C. Spinney, and Spinney's June 2002 testimony to Congress [PDF format].
8. GAO Report 10-478T, "Joint Strike Fighter: Significant Challenges and Decisions Ahead," March 24, 2010.
9. "Joint Strike Fighter: Latest Hot Spot in Americas Defense Meltdown," Jane's Defence Weekly, September 8, 2008. For cost comparison data see CDI's "How Much Will Each F-35 Cost?" and "Still More F-35 Cost Growth to Come." For A-10 cost data, see p. 166 of "Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign" [PDF], US General Accounting Office, June 1997.
10. GAO Report 10-388SP, "Defense Acquisitions, Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs," [PDF] March 2010.
11. Lamb, Christopher, Schmidt, Matthew, and Fitzsimmons, Berit, "MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform," Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 55, 4th Quarter 2009.
12. Baker, Fred, "Gates Seeks to Shift Thinking on Budget, War," American Forces Press Service, April 15, 2009.
13. National Defense Budget Estimates for 2011, pp. 113-114.
14. The data for the costs depicted in these bullets are from the December 2000, 2001, and 2009 DOD Selected Acquisition Report summaries. These are available via the US DoD.
15. See "Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs," [PDF] US Government Accountability Office, March 2009, GAO-09-326SP.
16. CDI, "How Congress Finances Pork." For annual tabulations of the earmarks in defense spending bills, see the website and data base of Tax Payers for Common Sense.
17. See "Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) F-35 As of December 31, 2009" available at the InsideDefense.com website (full tables via US OSD) and discussed at CDI's "Still More F-35 Cost Growth to Come." The SAR reveals that the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics endorsed a F-35 SAR cost estimate employing the cost estimates of the JET II independent cost estimating team for only 5 of the 29 years projected for the F-35 program, and using the optimistic under-estimates of the program's in-house advocates for 24 of those same 29 years.
18. GAO Report 10-478T, "Joint Strike Fighter, Significant Challenges and Decisions Ahead", March 24, 2010.
19. See "Major Failings in Army Spin Outs," by Greg Grant, April 16, 2010 at DOD Buzz.
20. See the report at DoD IG [PDF].
21. See p. 801 of the Conference Report for HR 2647 [PDF], National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.
22. Capaccio, Tony, "Gates to Target U.S. Military Bureaucracy in Fiscal 2012 Budget," Bloomberg Business Week, May 12, 2010.
23. Congressional Budget Office, "Budget Options" [PDF] pp. 28, 29, & 31.
Citation: Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), America’s Fiscal Defense Crisis, Defense Industry Daily, 27 May 2010. http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Sen-Tom-Coburn-Americas-Fiscal-Defense-Crisis-06412/
Defense Industry Daily, 27 May 2010
Memo submitted to the USA's current National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
This memorandum describes what I believe are serious problems in our defense budget and some ideas to address them. I appreciate that some of these thoughts are controversial - even to the point that I have some reluctance in suggesting them. However, if we are to fulfill our mandate, we must make some difficult choices, not just recommend that others do so. In other cases, such as exacting financial accountability from the Department of Defense, I believe we all can agree. Indeed, without our adopting controversial, but vitally important, ideas, I fear we cannot achieve our mandate.
Despite the sacrifice, heroism, and professionalism that our military personnel have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's defenses have been decaying, despite - perhaps even because of - increasing budgets. The ongoing corrosion and growing expense have been with us for decades, and span numerous presidents and political parties. Our Commission affords us an opportunity to start some very late due diligence on national defense spending. If these reforms are taken without the usual forms of compromise that always seem to occur - and prevailing practices that corrode our defenses are truly discarded - a stronger American military will result.
What Problems?
As Stephen Daggett from the Congressional Research service noted in an earlier discretionary working group meeting, total Pentagon spending is higher today - in inflation-adjusted ("constant") dollars than at any time during the last 60 years. This includes the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Defense Department spending during President Regan's administration.
Not counting the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the "base" Pentagon budget has increased from $407 billion in 2001 to $553 billion for 2011 in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the newest US defense budget data. Over the past decade, this means a cumulative total increase of almost $1 Trillion for the base DOD budget.[1]
- Compared to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, we are spending more than three times what all those nations spend, combined.[2]
- US defense spending almost matches what the entire rest of the world spends.[3]
- The Obama Administration's current plan is to increase DOD spending by one to two per cent (real growth) each year for the foreseeable future.[4]
The current DOD plan is to make the Air Force even smaller, at dramatically increased procurement costs. The Navy has a draft shipbuilding plan to marginally increase the fleet from 287 ships to just over 300, but only if shipbuilding budgets are increased by 30 percent or more. Meanwhile current plans to "upgrade" naval aviation mean a smaller force than we had during the 1990s but at a cost of more than quadrupling spending for naval combat aircraft. The Army is spending up to $88 billion to increase its core active duty combat brigades from 38 to just 42.[6]
Aging Forces: At the same time, major hardware inventories have actually grown older, on average. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), among others, major categories of military equipment are aging in an unprecedented manner. CBO data also shows us that the DOD plan in many major hardware categories is for this problem to grow worse - assuming no further cost growth or schedule delay in each program. While cost of the high operating tempos for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have exacerbated this trend, it predates those wars and would be worsening even without them.[7]
For waging conventional war, the new weapons we buy to replace old ones increase in cost far faster than the budget increases (which makes inevitable the shrinking and aging of our weapons, at growing cost). Also, the new systems rarely, if ever, bring a performance improvement commensurate with the cost increase. In some cases the new system is even a step backwards. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's close air support capability is a good example.
Among the aircraft it is to replace is the 1970s vintage - but still much used and almost universally praised - A-10 close air support aircraft. Even if the F-35 stays at its currently stated purchase price of $131 million per aircraft it will cost almost nine times more than an A-10, using inflation adjusted dollars.[8] At that huge additional cost, it will have less payload than an A-10; it will not be able to loiter over the battlefield to help troops engaged in combat hour after hour; it will be too fast to be able to find targets independently, and even if it could, it will be too fragile to survive at the low altitude it must fly at to be truly effective, even against the primitive small arms and machinegun defenses terrorists and insurgents can mount. It also lacks the extraordinarily effective 30 mm cannon the A-10 carries, a weapon of astounding lethality against a wide variety of target types, including heavy armor.[9]
Slow and Inflexible Acquisitions: For traditional programs within the acquisition system, the Government Accountability Office has also reported many cases of schedule delays of months and even years are due to the numerous additions of new requirements for weapon systems.[10] For the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, senior military leaders had to go outside the normal acquisition process in order to obtain both body armor and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs).[11] In frustration regarding the acquisition of the MRAP vehicles and other requirements for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself has said that the Pentagon is not on a ‘war’ footing when it comes to budget and acquisitions.[12]
Where Did the Money Go?
Hardware Cost Growth: Since 2001, spending for our shrinking, aging hardware inventory has grown from $75 billion in annual procurement dollars to $113 billion today.[13] The Defense Department's Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs) show two types of problems in this increased spending: programs that hugely increase in cost to buy no extra weapons, and programs that hugely increase in cost to buy fewer weapons.[14]
For example:
- In 2000, the Air Force promised 341 F-22 fighters would cost $61.9 billion ($181.5 million each). Today's estimate is $66.7 billion for 188 aircraft ($354.5 million each). Program cost went up 8 percent. Unit cost went up 95 percent. The inventory to be bought shrank by 45 percent.
- In 2001, DOD predicted 2,866 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for $226.0 billion, or $79 million each. Today, DOD is predicting 2,457 F-35s for $328.3 billion. The unit cost has gone up 68 percent to $131 million each, while the units to buy shrank by 14 percent. The negative trends for this aircraft are not reassuring for the future.
- In 2000, the Navy projected 12 LPD-17 amphibious warfare ships for $10.7 billion ($891.7 million each); today we expect to build 11 LPD-17s for $18.7 billion ($1.7 billion each). Program cost went up 75 percent, and unit cost went up 89 percent, while the inventory shrank by a ship.
Pork: Congress added at least $60 billion in pork to post-September, 2001 defense bills.[16] Earmark projects were added without an objective estimate of actual cost, without an independent evaluation of need or efficacy, and without competition.
The budget growth for hardware (as discussed above) is simply unaffordable. The longer we wait to solve the problem, the steeper the cuts must be in both accounts in order to operate at a sustainable rate.
Will Recent Legislation Fix the Problem?
Despite decades of acquisition reform from Congress, the Pentagon, and the think tanks, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) tells us that cost overruns in weapon systems are higher today, in inflation adjusted dollars, than any time since they have been measured. Last year, Congress passed the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. Almost every Member of Congress supported it, along with top Department of Defense managers. The early returns on the enactment of this legislation are not encouraging.
For example, one area of immense focus in the legislation was the goal of obtaining realistic, objectively derived cost estimates for major weapon systems. Despite this emphasis and the rhetoric of top Pentagon management, the new cost estimates for DOD's largest acquisition program, the Joint Strike Fighter, reject much of the work of an independent cost estimating team, known as JET II.[17] As a result, Congress and the Pentagon are locking themselves into a program that will only continue to grow in cost, and yet the Pentagon still plans to spend over $70 billion to purchase 420 Joint Strike Fighters before completing flight testing.[18]
In yet another example of the bill's ineffectual support for another reform (competitive "fly-before-buy" procurement), the Army is also rushing ahead into production its various "spin-offs" from the cancelled - ultra complex, underperforming, high cost growth - Future Combat Systems program. The Army is nonetheless blindly plunging ahead into production of the "spin-offs" despite the DOD operational testing office's finding that they exhibit "notable performance deficiencies."[19]
Fixing the Mess
The single most important step to solving this depressing array of problems is to better understand how the Pentagon spends its money - both historically and prospectively. Without an accurate grasp at the start of a spending program as to its most likely cost, schedule, and performance, how can decision makers understand the future consequences of their actions? Today, an ethic continues to predominate in the Pentagon that consistently paints an inaccurate picture - one that is biased in the same, unrealistic and ultimately unaffordable direction. The errors are not random: actual costs always turn out to be much higher than, sometimes even multiples of, early estimates.
The reason is simple; the Pentagon doesn't know how it spends its money. In a strict financial accountability sense, it doesn't even know if the money is spent. This incomprehensible condition has been documented in hundreds of reports over three decades from both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department's own Inspector General (DOD IG).
In a depressing and little-noticed report, the Pentagon Inspector General reported the following in its "Summary of DOD Office of the Inspector General Audits of Financial Management."[20]
- The financial management systems DOD has put in place to control and monitor the money flow don't facilitate but actually "prevent DOD from collecting and reporting financial information . that is accurate, reliable, and timely." (page 4)
- DOD frequently enters "unsupported" amounts in its books (page 13) and uses those imaginary figures to make the books balance. (page 14) Inventory records are not reviewed and adjusted; unreliable and inaccurate data are used to report inventories, and purchases are made based on those distorted inventory reports. (page 7)
- DOD managers do not know how much money is in their accounts at the Treasury, nor when they spend more than Congress appropriates to them. (page 5) Nor does DOD "record, report, collect, and reconcile" funds received from other agencies or the public (page 6), and DOD tracks neither buyer nor seller amounts when conducting transactions with other agencies. (page 12)
- "The cost and depreciation of the DOD general property, plant, and equipment are not reliably reported ..the value of DOD property and material in the possession of contractors is not reliably reported." (pages 8-9)
- DOD does not know who owes it money, nor how much. (page 10)
- DOD does not accurately estimate or report the cost of cleaning up its facilities, does not track its environmental liabilities, and does not have a complete record of its ranges and operational activities. (page 11)
- "Audit trails" are not kept "in sufficient detail," which means no one can track the money;
- DOD's "Internal Controls," intended to track the money, are inoperative. Thus, DOD cost reports and financial statements are inaccurate, but the size, even the vector, of the errors cannot be identified because the data cannot be verified, and
- DOD does not observe many of the laws that govern all this.
For example, the DOD IG reports that:
- "The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 . required . [DOD] to prepare financial statements that were audited by either the Inspector General or an independent public accountant."
- In 2001 Congress limited the amount of audit work performed by the DOD IG under the CFO Act based on management's representation regarding the [un-]reliability of the financial statements." (page 1 of the summary report identified above.)
If we do not have a system that does not accurately know what its spending history is, and does not know what it is now how can we make a competent, honest estimate of future costs? No failed system can be fixed if it cannot be accurately measured.
And yet, there is no sense of urgency in the Pentagon to do anything about it. Indeed, in the 1990s, we were promised this problem would be solved by 1997. In the early 2000s, we were promised it would be solved by 2007; then 2016; then 2017. Now we are being told 2017 is unrealistic.
It is quite clear that this essential key to controlling spending will not be effectively addressed by a Pentagon left to its own devices.
The overall discussion above suggests a number of ways to control defense costs and ensure the reduced spending brings reform and improves our forces. The summary paragraphs below describe the essence of these ideas; however, it is worth mentioning that riddling such reforms with loopholes and exceptions will only result in yet more business as usual.
1. Begin a crash program to have the Pentagon pass a financial audit
To provide the necessary incentive for a financial audit the "base" Pentagon budget should be frozen in FY2012 at the FY2011 level. Unless and until all major components and all major defense acquisition programs are certified by the Inspector General or an independent public accountant for an unqualified audit opinion, spending for those components and those programs should remain frozen. This freeze should not apply to any spending for direct support of overseas contingency operations or Defense Department personnel and wounded warrior accounts. If the Secretary of Defense or Congress asserts that a freeze will harm the national security of the United States or our troops in combat, funding may be increased but only by equally reducing other Defense Department components or programs.
2. Stop High Cost Growth Acquisition and Reinvest the Savings
No defense acquisition program may progress beyond a very limited number of Low Rate Initial Production items, unless and until the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation has reported to the secretary of defense and Congress that it is effective and suitable and that all planned development and operational testing is complete. There will be no exceptions from this prohibition of "concurrency;" no programs currently being developed in the Department of Defense are exempt, except that during combat operations authorized by Congress. That hardware may be delivered before the completion of operational testing to combat theaters on the direct, written request of the pertinent regional commander. Any immediate savings from the suspension of premature production of incompletely or untested defense programs may be reinvested in expanded production of fully tested defense programs to enlarge operational inventories and reverse inventory aging. For example, the short term savings from the suspension of further F-35 production may be used to purchase additional F-15, F-16, and F-18 aircraft and to refurbish A-10 aircraft which would immediately assist our ground forces in Afghanistan with additional support.
3. End the Pork Process
No line item increase "earmark" in defense spending bills and reports should be allowed without an estimate from CBO of its past, current, and future costs, an evaluation from GAO as to its need and efficacy. Finally no funds for congressional "earmarks" should be obligated unless there is a true full and open competition.
4. Support Military Pay and Benefits but Curtail the Excess
Congress should assess the long term affordability of DOD personnel pay and benefits, including for dependents, retirees, and survivors. Pay and benefits should be reformed to the extent that all such benefits are affordable within a DOD budget that assumes zero real growth for the foreseeable future. One of the areas that should be examined is the massively complicated pay structure built in to the Department of Defense. The layers of complexity involved with administering all the special pays, incentives, and tax benefits have a huge cost on the Defense Department in the area of administrative and human resources costs that do not benefit our troops. Similarly, the Defense Department should determine which benefit programs are valued the most by our servicemen and women to determine if certain prized benefits can be boosted while underutilized and obsolete benefits are phased out. Regarding the sheer number of personnel in the Department, Secretary Gates has also noted that the Department of Defense has far too many headquarters, staff, and bureaucracy that merely create more work for subordinate units.[22] Thorough examination in areas such as these could yield significant savings without any reduction in benefits for our troops and their families.
5. Eliminate Non-Defense Pentagon Spending
The secretary of defense and the director of the Office of Management and Budget should move out of the National Defense budget function any and all spending that does not directly and substantially contribute to the national defense. A list of such activities now within the defense budget includes DOD Medical research for non-combat applications duplicated by the National Institutes of Health, National Guard counter-drug activities duplicated by local police and state-run efforts, and DOD expenses for running grocery stores and other commercial operations.[23]
6. Eliminate End of Year Spending Sprees
Eliminate the current bureaucratic policy that all appropriated funds under unit commander's control must be spent before the end of the fiscal year; permit one-half of such funds retained to be used by local level unit commanders for proven, urgent needs for military readiness ("urgent" to be defined by OMB); the rest to be returned to the Treasury for deficit reduction. Base and unit commanders shall be evaluated on their ability to save such funds, use them for truly urgent readiness needs, and return money to the Treasury. The DOD IG shall be notified of all such retention and use of funds to enable selective audits.
Many other cost-saving and military reform ideas have already been articulated by GAO, CBO, nonprofit think tanks, and others. Given the limited time our commission has to fulfill our duty, I encourage other commission members to examine the numerous recommendations from these organizations.
I strongly believe that we can work together for common-sense ideas that can both reduce wasteful, unnecessary, and duplicative defense spending that does nothing to make our nation safe. I look forward to working with National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform on this momentous task.
Sincerely, Tom A. Coburn, MD, United States Senator
Dr. Tom Coburn is Oklahoma's junior U.S. Senator, serving from 1994 to the present day. He is a member of several Senate committees, including Intelligence, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
End Notes
1. Wheeler, Winslow "Our Shrinking, More Costly Force," Armed Forces Journal, October 2008.
2. See "The Military Balance, 2008," the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.
3. See "The Military Balance, 2008," above and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Yearbook for 2008, and Central Intelligence Agency, "The World Fact Book, 2007."
4. National Defense Budget Estimates for 2011, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), March 2010, p. 114.
5. Gates, Robert, "Navy League Sea-Air Space Exposition, Remarks as Delivered", Gaylord Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland, Monday May 3, 2010.
6. Chapter 10 ("Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck Is Here") and Chapter 11 ("Understand, The Contain America's Out of Control Defense Budget") in "America's Defense Meltdown," Stanford University Press, 2009. See also "Defense Death Spiral," by Franklin C. Spinney, and Spinney's June 2002 testimony to Congress [PDF format].
7. Chapter 10 ("Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck Is Here") and Chapter 11 ("Understand, The Contain America's Out of Control Defense Budget") in "America's Defense Meltdown," Stanford University Press, 2009. See also "Defense Death Spiral," by Franklin C. Spinney, and Spinney's June 2002 testimony to Congress [PDF format].
8. GAO Report 10-478T, "Joint Strike Fighter: Significant Challenges and Decisions Ahead," March 24, 2010.
9. "Joint Strike Fighter: Latest Hot Spot in Americas Defense Meltdown," Jane's Defence Weekly, September 8, 2008. For cost comparison data see CDI's "How Much Will Each F-35 Cost?" and "Still More F-35 Cost Growth to Come." For A-10 cost data, see p. 166 of "Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign" [PDF], US General Accounting Office, June 1997.
10. GAO Report 10-388SP, "Defense Acquisitions, Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs," [PDF] March 2010.
11. Lamb, Christopher, Schmidt, Matthew, and Fitzsimmons, Berit, "MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform," Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 55, 4th Quarter 2009.
12. Baker, Fred, "Gates Seeks to Shift Thinking on Budget, War," American Forces Press Service, April 15, 2009.
13. National Defense Budget Estimates for 2011, pp. 113-114.
14. The data for the costs depicted in these bullets are from the December 2000, 2001, and 2009 DOD Selected Acquisition Report summaries. These are available via the US DoD.
15. See "Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs," [PDF] US Government Accountability Office, March 2009, GAO-09-326SP.
16. CDI, "How Congress Finances Pork." For annual tabulations of the earmarks in defense spending bills, see the website and data base of Tax Payers for Common Sense.
17. See "Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) F-35 As of December 31, 2009" available at the InsideDefense.com website (full tables via US OSD) and discussed at CDI's "Still More F-35 Cost Growth to Come." The SAR reveals that the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics endorsed a F-35 SAR cost estimate employing the cost estimates of the JET II independent cost estimating team for only 5 of the 29 years projected for the F-35 program, and using the optimistic under-estimates of the program's in-house advocates for 24 of those same 29 years.
18. GAO Report 10-478T, "Joint Strike Fighter, Significant Challenges and Decisions Ahead", March 24, 2010.
19. See "Major Failings in Army Spin Outs," by Greg Grant, April 16, 2010 at DOD Buzz.
20. See the report at DoD IG [PDF].
21. See p. 801 of the Conference Report for HR 2647 [PDF], National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.
22. Capaccio, Tony, "Gates to Target U.S. Military Bureaucracy in Fiscal 2012 Budget," Bloomberg Business Week, May 12, 2010.
23. Congressional Budget Office, "Budget Options" [PDF] pp. 28, 29, & 31.
Citation: Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), America’s Fiscal Defense Crisis, Defense Industry Daily, 27 May 2010. http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Sen-Tom-Coburn-Americas-Fiscal-Defense-Crisis-06412/
QDR is a Quite Disappointing Report
George C. Wilson
CongressDaily, 8 March 2010
President Obama's big thinkers fussed from February 2009 to January 2010 over what to put in this year's sweeping, congressionally mandated review of future defense strategy that would justify what the Pentagon was doing and might do in the future if Congress voted it enough money.
The formal name of this kabuki dance that bureaucrats perform every four years is Quadrennial Defense Review or QDR. The QDR is one of those documents that government insiders argue about endlessly to make sure they do not say anything offensive, provocative, informative or even interesting. Few outsiders read the QDR, if they have heard of it at all.
The House Armed Services Committee recently did hold a quickie hearing on this year's 105-page QDR during which Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., gave the Pentagon's chief author, policy director Michelle Flournoy, a brush of a kiss while ranking member Rep. Howard (Buck) McKeon of California gave her a bit of a slap.
Said congressional veteran Skelton: "Overall I find the 2010 QDR to be a solid product and superior to the last several iterations that we've had ... Still, the way the QDR seems to treat the force-sizing construct is to advocate for a force that is capable of being all things to all contingencies."
"It's tough to determine what the priority is, what the most likely risk we face may be, and what may be the most dangerous," McKeon said. "It seems that the QDR makes no significant changes to major pieces of our current force."
Complained McKeon: "This QDR provides a force structure for the years we're in today when the purpose of the review is exactly the opposite: to prepare for the likely conflicts of tomorrow. One must ask what's new here? If this is really a vision for the defense program for the next 20 years, as the statute requires, then why does the QDR lay out a force structure for the next five years, not to mention one that looks a lot like today's force? The QDR is supposed to shape the department for 2029, not describe the Pentagon in 2009."
Flournoy answered in typical diplo-speak: "Our efforts in this QDR really have evolved around the imperative to reaffirm our commitment to the health of America's all-volunteer force, to rebalance our program and capabilities to fight both the wars that we're in today and also prepare for future contingencies and to reform how and what we buy."
"Rebalance" is the euphemism Defense Secretary Robert Gates uses to try to persuade Congress to cancel some of the clunkers he does not want to keep buying, like the Boeing C-17 transport, to free up money to buy the here-and-now smaller weapons to help our troops fight back the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for Flournoy's words about changing the way the Pentagon chooses and buys weapons, Gates is but the latest in a long line of defense executives to promise reform. Last year he had all he could do to convince Congress to stop buying F-22 fighters which cost $350 million a copy and don't help win the war against terrorism. Gates will find the reform hill even steeper this election year as lawmakers balk at killing any weapon, however unnecessary, that provides jobs back home.
I spent months in 1997 going behind the scenes at the Pentagon and Congress to find out about all the wheeling and dealing that went into the writing of the QDR that year. "I had high hopes for the QDR," Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff, told me. "In my view, for the QDR to be a success there was going to have to be some fairly significant realignment among the [armed] services."
But Fogleman said his hopes for meaningful reform were dashed when the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, sent a two-star general to Fogleman's office to deliver this message: "The chairman would like to have the QDR turn out to be as close to the status quo as we can make this thing work. His message is: 'We don't need any Billy Mitchells,'" the general said, referring to Army Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, who revolutionized the use of air power by demonstrating in 1923 how bombers could sink Navy warships.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote this assessment of the 2010 QDR: "From my perspective the QDR takes positive steps to support the Department's efforts to rebalance the force and reform processes. It provides needed focus on improving stability and defending our vital interests in the Middle East and South Asia as well as continuing to be good stewards of the health of the force and balancing global strategic risk."
But Shalikashvili's mind-set about preserving the status quo still dominates the thinking in today's Pentagon. So, despite some promises of change around the edges in this newest QDR, I see the 2010 report headed for the Pentagon's huge mausoleum of unread or unheeded documents which didn't make a significant difference.
George C. Wilson writes the “Forward Observer” column for CongressDaily.
Citation: George C. Wilson, QDR is a Quite Disappointing Report, CongressDaily, 8 March 2010. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44743&sid=61
CongressDaily, 8 March 2010
President Obama's big thinkers fussed from February 2009 to January 2010 over what to put in this year's sweeping, congressionally mandated review of future defense strategy that would justify what the Pentagon was doing and might do in the future if Congress voted it enough money.
The formal name of this kabuki dance that bureaucrats perform every four years is Quadrennial Defense Review or QDR. The QDR is one of those documents that government insiders argue about endlessly to make sure they do not say anything offensive, provocative, informative or even interesting. Few outsiders read the QDR, if they have heard of it at all.
The House Armed Services Committee recently did hold a quickie hearing on this year's 105-page QDR during which Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., gave the Pentagon's chief author, policy director Michelle Flournoy, a brush of a kiss while ranking member Rep. Howard (Buck) McKeon of California gave her a bit of a slap.
Said congressional veteran Skelton: "Overall I find the 2010 QDR to be a solid product and superior to the last several iterations that we've had ... Still, the way the QDR seems to treat the force-sizing construct is to advocate for a force that is capable of being all things to all contingencies."
"It's tough to determine what the priority is, what the most likely risk we face may be, and what may be the most dangerous," McKeon said. "It seems that the QDR makes no significant changes to major pieces of our current force."
Complained McKeon: "This QDR provides a force structure for the years we're in today when the purpose of the review is exactly the opposite: to prepare for the likely conflicts of tomorrow. One must ask what's new here? If this is really a vision for the defense program for the next 20 years, as the statute requires, then why does the QDR lay out a force structure for the next five years, not to mention one that looks a lot like today's force? The QDR is supposed to shape the department for 2029, not describe the Pentagon in 2009."
Flournoy answered in typical diplo-speak: "Our efforts in this QDR really have evolved around the imperative to reaffirm our commitment to the health of America's all-volunteer force, to rebalance our program and capabilities to fight both the wars that we're in today and also prepare for future contingencies and to reform how and what we buy."
"Rebalance" is the euphemism Defense Secretary Robert Gates uses to try to persuade Congress to cancel some of the clunkers he does not want to keep buying, like the Boeing C-17 transport, to free up money to buy the here-and-now smaller weapons to help our troops fight back the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for Flournoy's words about changing the way the Pentagon chooses and buys weapons, Gates is but the latest in a long line of defense executives to promise reform. Last year he had all he could do to convince Congress to stop buying F-22 fighters which cost $350 million a copy and don't help win the war against terrorism. Gates will find the reform hill even steeper this election year as lawmakers balk at killing any weapon, however unnecessary, that provides jobs back home.
I spent months in 1997 going behind the scenes at the Pentagon and Congress to find out about all the wheeling and dealing that went into the writing of the QDR that year. "I had high hopes for the QDR," Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff, told me. "In my view, for the QDR to be a success there was going to have to be some fairly significant realignment among the [armed] services."
But Fogleman said his hopes for meaningful reform were dashed when the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. John Shalikashvili, sent a two-star general to Fogleman's office to deliver this message: "The chairman would like to have the QDR turn out to be as close to the status quo as we can make this thing work. His message is: 'We don't need any Billy Mitchells,'" the general said, referring to Army Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, who revolutionized the use of air power by demonstrating in 1923 how bombers could sink Navy warships.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote this assessment of the 2010 QDR: "From my perspective the QDR takes positive steps to support the Department's efforts to rebalance the force and reform processes. It provides needed focus on improving stability and defending our vital interests in the Middle East and South Asia as well as continuing to be good stewards of the health of the force and balancing global strategic risk."
But Shalikashvili's mind-set about preserving the status quo still dominates the thinking in today's Pentagon. So, despite some promises of change around the edges in this newest QDR, I see the 2010 report headed for the Pentagon's huge mausoleum of unread or unheeded documents which didn't make a significant difference.
George C. Wilson writes the “Forward Observer” column for CongressDaily.
Citation: George C. Wilson, QDR is a Quite Disappointing Report, CongressDaily, 8 March 2010. http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44743&sid=61
For the sake of national security, the pentagon must tighten its belt
Carl Conetta and Charles Knight
National Defense, May 2010
Early in 2010, President Obama called for a freeze on most federal discretionary spending, notably exempting national defense. But few would be surprised if defense faces some real cuts in 2012 and after. There is already gathering a perfect storm of public concern about the national debt. And the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, formed by the President in February, is not bound by the fence that the administration erected around the Pentagon budget.
So how big is the deficit and debt burden for America? And, if the Pentagon has to take a hit a year from now, how can it trim spending without jeopardizing national security?
Currently the federal government is running a deficit that is a little more than 8 percent of GDP. A good piece of this is crisis spending meant to lift the economy out of the severe recession it entered two years ago.
According to the administration's plan, this deficit is to be reduced. Starting in 2012, it will average a bit more than 4.3 percent of GDP, remaining at that level for the subsequent six years. This target is remarkably similar to the average deficits during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies from 1980 to 1992. What is more problematic is the nearly unprecedented level of accumulating national debt.
In 2008, the gross federal debt stood at 70 percent of GDP. In 2017, it is projected to be 104 percent of GDP. It hasn't been that high since World War II, when emergency war spending boosted the gross national debt from about 50 percent of GDP (1940) to 120 percent (1945). After the war, it took about 20 years for the debt to recede to below 50 percent of GDP.
Right now, government planning doesn't take us beyond 2017, but there should be little doubt about the prospects of some combination of spending cuts and tax increases ahead. How much of each will be hotly contested.
If the Pentagon is compelled to economize, what are the opportunities to do so? In fact, there are many - although the permissive spending environment of the past 10 years sapped any incentive to pursue them.
Here are of some of the measures that could yield or enable many billions of dollars in savings:
* Invest more authority in the joint staff of the armed forces so that it can effectively integrate and direct planning, acquisition and budgeting. This would make it possible to trim redundancies in the missions and capabilities of the various services. Only joint authority can compel the services to integrate their modernization efforts in accord with a cost-effective and sustainable security strategy.
* Rationalize and consolidate wherever possible individual service maintenance depots, training programs and facilities, commissaries, service schools, and medical, legal and chaplain services.
* Make a concerted effort to reduce the complexity of the military establishment. This means streamlining and consolidating some of the many agencies, offices, and commands that presently operate at every level within and across the services. Although broadly recognized as an imperative ever since the military began its post-Cold War drawdown, streamlining efforts during the 1990s never got very far.
* Put a break on the rapid expansion of Pentagon global peacetime and operational ambitions and authorities. Trim away the roles and missions that are no longer of the highest priority - and become much more circumspect about adding new ones.
* Get the Defense Department's finances in order. The Pentagon's persistent and pervasive failure to pass an audit makes rational decision making nearly impossible. So balancing the books should be seen as a national security imperative. Good decision making also requires that the Pentagon account for how it allocates its funds and efforts among missions, new and old - something it doesn't currently do.
None of the above will happen unless Congress and the Obama administration make it happen. The political risks in doing so may seem daunting. But there is nothing suggested here that would weaken U.S. national security. Clarity of purpose, financial accountability, efficiency and sustainability are not the enemy. Instead, they offer the only hope for ensuring our strength against the fiscal storm ahead.
Conetta and Knight are co-directors of the Project on Defense Alternatives and members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Carl Conetta and Charles Knight, “For the sake of national security, the pentagon must tighten its belt,” National Defense, May 2010. http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/May/Pages/PentagonHastoTightenitsBelt.aspx
National Defense, May 2010
Early in 2010, President Obama called for a freeze on most federal discretionary spending, notably exempting national defense. But few would be surprised if defense faces some real cuts in 2012 and after. There is already gathering a perfect storm of public concern about the national debt. And the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, formed by the President in February, is not bound by the fence that the administration erected around the Pentagon budget.
So how big is the deficit and debt burden for America? And, if the Pentagon has to take a hit a year from now, how can it trim spending without jeopardizing national security?
Currently the federal government is running a deficit that is a little more than 8 percent of GDP. A good piece of this is crisis spending meant to lift the economy out of the severe recession it entered two years ago.
According to the administration's plan, this deficit is to be reduced. Starting in 2012, it will average a bit more than 4.3 percent of GDP, remaining at that level for the subsequent six years. This target is remarkably similar to the average deficits during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies from 1980 to 1992. What is more problematic is the nearly unprecedented level of accumulating national debt.
In 2008, the gross federal debt stood at 70 percent of GDP. In 2017, it is projected to be 104 percent of GDP. It hasn't been that high since World War II, when emergency war spending boosted the gross national debt from about 50 percent of GDP (1940) to 120 percent (1945). After the war, it took about 20 years for the debt to recede to below 50 percent of GDP.
Right now, government planning doesn't take us beyond 2017, but there should be little doubt about the prospects of some combination of spending cuts and tax increases ahead. How much of each will be hotly contested.
If the Pentagon is compelled to economize, what are the opportunities to do so? In fact, there are many - although the permissive spending environment of the past 10 years sapped any incentive to pursue them.
Here are of some of the measures that could yield or enable many billions of dollars in savings:
* Invest more authority in the joint staff of the armed forces so that it can effectively integrate and direct planning, acquisition and budgeting. This would make it possible to trim redundancies in the missions and capabilities of the various services. Only joint authority can compel the services to integrate their modernization efforts in accord with a cost-effective and sustainable security strategy.
* Rationalize and consolidate wherever possible individual service maintenance depots, training programs and facilities, commissaries, service schools, and medical, legal and chaplain services.
* Make a concerted effort to reduce the complexity of the military establishment. This means streamlining and consolidating some of the many agencies, offices, and commands that presently operate at every level within and across the services. Although broadly recognized as an imperative ever since the military began its post-Cold War drawdown, streamlining efforts during the 1990s never got very far.
* Put a break on the rapid expansion of Pentagon global peacetime and operational ambitions and authorities. Trim away the roles and missions that are no longer of the highest priority - and become much more circumspect about adding new ones.
* Get the Defense Department's finances in order. The Pentagon's persistent and pervasive failure to pass an audit makes rational decision making nearly impossible. So balancing the books should be seen as a national security imperative. Good decision making also requires that the Pentagon account for how it allocates its funds and efforts among missions, new and old - something it doesn't currently do.
None of the above will happen unless Congress and the Obama administration make it happen. The political risks in doing so may seem daunting. But there is nothing suggested here that would weaken U.S. national security. Clarity of purpose, financial accountability, efficiency and sustainability are not the enemy. Instead, they offer the only hope for ensuring our strength against the fiscal storm ahead.
Conetta and Knight are co-directors of the Project on Defense Alternatives and members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Carl Conetta and Charles Knight, “For the sake of national security, the pentagon must tighten its belt,” National Defense, May 2010. http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/May/Pages/PentagonHastoTightenitsBelt.aspx
The wrong manhood test
Christopher Preble and Heather Hurlburt
Politico, 4 February 2010
In last week's State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared that he would freeze government spending for three years, excepting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and "spending related to our national security."
This week, we can see what that blanket exemption for the Pentagon will cost us. The base budget (which excludes war costs) weighs in at a whopping $548.9 billion, the largest since the end of World War II. Military spending advocates might note that this represents just a 3.4 percent increase over last year, but inflation-adjusted spending on national defense has ballooned by 60 percent over the past 10 years. The fiscal year 2011 budget request also includes an additional $182 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The accumulated costs of these wars now total more than $1 trillion.
The media and politicians have made an expanding military budget into a manhood test for civilian leaders. But a real test of a leader's wisdom and strength would recognize that more spending does not equal greater security.
The president defends his decision to grow the Pentagon's budget because he is concerned about the strains on our troops and their families. That is a valid concern. Since the end of the Cold War, but especially since Sept. 11, huge increases in spending haven't closed the gap between the forces we have and the enormous missions with which we have saddled them.
But ultimately, because our national security rests on our economic health as well as on the strength of our military, a liberal and a libertarian can agree that the Pentagon should no longer get a pass. Congress must stop funding projects to satisfy parochial domestic interests. The Pentagon must stop buying weapons systems that are already outdated, unworkable or both. And the administration must carefully define our vital security interests, reshape our grand strategy to more equitably distribute the burdens of policing the globe and reduce the occasions when our military will be called on to fight.
Some cuts are easy, and they certainly would not undermine our security or endanger our troops in the field. Consider, for example, the spending that is driven chiefly by domestic politics - the bases, factories and depots that provide jobs for some Americans but not security for all Americans. The FY 2010 Pentagon budget included an estimated 1,720 earmarks totaling $4.2 billion. The correct number should be zero.
Then there is the problem of poor performance and mismanagement. A recent Government Accountability Office study found that defense contractors have consistently failed to complete the most important weapons systems within their original budgets, and these systems are delivered, on average, two years behind schedule. Ninety-five major systems exceeded their original cost estimates by a total of $295 billion from 2001 through 2007.
But eliminating the cost overruns and imposing more stringent oversight of public funds won't generate enormous savings in the grand scheme of things. Substantial reductions in U.S. military spending can come about only if we fundamentally change our approach to foreign policy. For nearly two decades, Republicans and Democrats in Washington have deployed the U.S. military as a police force of first resort. Now is the time for a change.
The just-issued Quadrennial Defense Review takes a few steps in this direction. But the defense budget could take many, many more. A range of programs and procurement habits survive on inertia and local politics but do not fit into the 21st-century vision of national defense or flat out don't work. Here are just three:
Our deployment of nuclear weapons in a triad - bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic weapons and submarine-launched missiles - was developed during the Cold War, when we had more than 10,000 warheads and were facing an adversary with even more. But nuclear weapons are useless against terrorists and irregular fighters. As we negotiate with the Russians to make deep cuts in our arsenals, the strategic triad should become a dyad, and costly manned bombers should get out of the nuclear business.
Axing just one of the four additional F-22s - which the administration says it does not need - would save more than $200 million. That could provide a year's worth of counseling for 49,000 veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and other psychological problems.
Canceling the purchase of one Virginia-class submarine (cost: $2 billion) would fund the first year of base pay for 117,000 new enlistees.
While the public strongly supports our military and its missions, it is also hungry for change. Most Americans want to be engaged in the world without having to be in charge of it. Recognizing that a significant portion of our military spending doesn't in fact relate to our national security would, in fact, be quite a test of manhood. Even by Washington standards.
Heather Hurlburt is executive director of the National Security Network. Christopher Preble is director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Both are members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Christopher Preble and Heather Hurlburt, “The wrong manhood test,” Politico, 4 February 2010. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32479.html
Politico, 4 February 2010
In last week's State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared that he would freeze government spending for three years, excepting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and "spending related to our national security."
This week, we can see what that blanket exemption for the Pentagon will cost us. The base budget (which excludes war costs) weighs in at a whopping $548.9 billion, the largest since the end of World War II. Military spending advocates might note that this represents just a 3.4 percent increase over last year, but inflation-adjusted spending on national defense has ballooned by 60 percent over the past 10 years. The fiscal year 2011 budget request also includes an additional $182 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The accumulated costs of these wars now total more than $1 trillion.
The media and politicians have made an expanding military budget into a manhood test for civilian leaders. But a real test of a leader's wisdom and strength would recognize that more spending does not equal greater security.
The president defends his decision to grow the Pentagon's budget because he is concerned about the strains on our troops and their families. That is a valid concern. Since the end of the Cold War, but especially since Sept. 11, huge increases in spending haven't closed the gap between the forces we have and the enormous missions with which we have saddled them.
But ultimately, because our national security rests on our economic health as well as on the strength of our military, a liberal and a libertarian can agree that the Pentagon should no longer get a pass. Congress must stop funding projects to satisfy parochial domestic interests. The Pentagon must stop buying weapons systems that are already outdated, unworkable or both. And the administration must carefully define our vital security interests, reshape our grand strategy to more equitably distribute the burdens of policing the globe and reduce the occasions when our military will be called on to fight.
Some cuts are easy, and they certainly would not undermine our security or endanger our troops in the field. Consider, for example, the spending that is driven chiefly by domestic politics - the bases, factories and depots that provide jobs for some Americans but not security for all Americans. The FY 2010 Pentagon budget included an estimated 1,720 earmarks totaling $4.2 billion. The correct number should be zero.
Then there is the problem of poor performance and mismanagement. A recent Government Accountability Office study found that defense contractors have consistently failed to complete the most important weapons systems within their original budgets, and these systems are delivered, on average, two years behind schedule. Ninety-five major systems exceeded their original cost estimates by a total of $295 billion from 2001 through 2007.
But eliminating the cost overruns and imposing more stringent oversight of public funds won't generate enormous savings in the grand scheme of things. Substantial reductions in U.S. military spending can come about only if we fundamentally change our approach to foreign policy. For nearly two decades, Republicans and Democrats in Washington have deployed the U.S. military as a police force of first resort. Now is the time for a change.
The just-issued Quadrennial Defense Review takes a few steps in this direction. But the defense budget could take many, many more. A range of programs and procurement habits survive on inertia and local politics but do not fit into the 21st-century vision of national defense or flat out don't work. Here are just three:
Our deployment of nuclear weapons in a triad - bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic weapons and submarine-launched missiles - was developed during the Cold War, when we had more than 10,000 warheads and were facing an adversary with even more. But nuclear weapons are useless against terrorists and irregular fighters. As we negotiate with the Russians to make deep cuts in our arsenals, the strategic triad should become a dyad, and costly manned bombers should get out of the nuclear business.
Axing just one of the four additional F-22s - which the administration says it does not need - would save more than $200 million. That could provide a year's worth of counseling for 49,000 veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and other psychological problems.
Canceling the purchase of one Virginia-class submarine (cost: $2 billion) would fund the first year of base pay for 117,000 new enlistees.
While the public strongly supports our military and its missions, it is also hungry for change. Most Americans want to be engaged in the world without having to be in charge of it. Recognizing that a significant portion of our military spending doesn't in fact relate to our national security would, in fact, be quite a test of manhood. Even by Washington standards.
Heather Hurlburt is executive director of the National Security Network. Christopher Preble is director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Both are members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Christopher Preble and Heather Hurlburt, “The wrong manhood test,” Politico, 4 February 2010. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32479.html
Indispensable or insolvent?
Stephen M. Walt
ForeignPolicy.com, 21 June 2010
If the United States reduced its defense budget significantly, how would this affect international affairs? I raise this point because one of the primary justifications for America's disproportionately high level of defense spending is the idea that U.S. military dominance is an essential stabilizing force in contemporary world politics. This argument has been advanced by scholars like William Wohlforth and Michael Mandelbaum, was implicit in Madeleine Albright's infamous characterization of the United States as the "indispensable power," and runs throughout the Clinton, Bush and now Obama versions of the National Security Strategy. It is also one of those well-established verities that are rarely questioned in the American foreign policy establishment.
Given our current budget situation, however, that assumption really ought to be questioned. The United States spends more on national security than the rest of the world combined, and a substantially larger fraction of its GDP than other major powers do. According to the 2010 edition of the IISS Military Balance, in 2008 the US spent about 4.9 percent of GDP on national security, and the defense budget has grown in real terms by about 3 percent per year since 2001. By contrast, China spent about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense, Russia 2.4% Great Britain only 2.3 percent , and German and Japan roughly 1.3 percent and 0.9 percent respectively. Lucky them.
Meanwhile, the United States has been piling up impressive amounts of red ink in recent years. The federal deficit reached 10 percent of GDP in FY2009 (the highest level since 1945), and various projections suggest that total U.S debt could reach 80 to 100 percent of GDP by FY2020. (My thanks to Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center and George Washington University, the author of an unpublished paper from which I drew these numbers). This situation led President Obama to form a bipartisan commission to study ways to reduce the federal deficit, and the president and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both made it clear that defense spending has to be part of that process.
No doubt defense contractors and congressional hawks will try to insulate DoD from significant cuts, but that position will be politically untenable if other sectors are being slashed. In fact, if we were really serious about trying to close the deficits mentioned above, we'd be looking at cuts similar to the "peace dividend" that accompanied the end of the Cold War. Measured in constant dollars, for example, the DoD budget fell 36 percent in constant dollars between 1985 and 1998, accompanied by comparable reductions in the active-duty force and the Pentagon's civilian workforce.
So here's my question: Would similar cuts today produce a dangerous shift in the structure of world politics and invite all sorts of nasty regional instability? I don't think so. If the U.S. cut defense by 20-30 percent (an enormous reduction), it would still be devoting roughly $400 billion per year to keeping Americans safe. Our national security spending would still be six times larger than China's, ten times larger than Russia's and a whopping forty times larger than Iran's. And because many militarily consequential powers are U.S. allies, its actual position is even better than those crude comparisons suggest. Thus, even seemingly draconian defense cuts would still leave the United States far stronger than any current rivals, especially if the reductions were done intelligently.
Moreover, if you look region-by-region, it's not obvious that reductions of this magnitude would change things very much. It would have little or no effect on Europe, because a large U.S. presence isn't central to European security any longer. There's little danger of serious conflict in Europe these days (and certainly no potential threat that the European states can't handle), and all that's needed from the United States is a mostly symbolic presence to help hold NATO together and remind Europeans not to let security competition reignite on the continent. And please don't try to tell me that Putin's Russia poses a resurgent threat to the rest of Europe. NATO Europe spends roughly $300 billion on defense each year compared to Russia's $40 billion; if our European allies can't handle Russia's not-very-impressive military, then they don't deserve U.S. help.
I'd say much the same thing about Latin America and Africa. Although the United States will remain diplomatically engaged with both regions (and maintain various security partnerships with states in each area), it is not likely to undertake major military operations on either continent. The United States could sustain its current level of peacetime activity in both regions with a smaller force structure, and political developments in both places have been and will probably remain largely independent of the size of the U.S. military presence or the level of U.S. defense spending. Put differently, we wouldn't be able to determine Africa's political future even if we spent ten percent of our GDP on defense, and major cuts wouldn't make much difference either.
The Persian Gulf is a different matter, but not as much as one might think. Once the United States is out of Iraq, it will be time to revert to its previous strategy of "offshore balancing." The United States has no need to control these oil-rich regions, it just wants to ensure that no single hostile power does. So long as the Gulf is divided, oil producers will continue to deliver oil to world markets where we can buy it. We can rely on local allies and naval power to preserve our access and influence, and keep a smaller version of the Rapid Deployment Force in reserve should the situation there deteriorate. Fortunately, none of the countries in the Gulf have significant power-projection capabilities, which will make it relatively easy to maintain a stable balance-of-power in the region. Remember: a reduced U.S. budget would still leave the U.S. far stronger than any other country in the world, and it would not herald a return to isolationism. The Gulf still matters, but we would have enough to protect our interests there, particularly if we allocated assets wisely.
East Asia is another place where dramatic U.S. reductions might have noticeable effects over time. America's ability to act with impunity in areas very close to China (such as the Sea of Japan, or Taiwan) might begin to erode (though it would not disappear overnight), particularly if China built up its own forces rapidly and our Asian allies did nothing in response. What this means, it seems to me, is that we would want to reallocate a larger percentage of defense assets to Asia, thereby mitigating the effects of an overall budget decrease. We also want to devote more attention to nurturing security ties with other states in the region, who are increasingly concerned about China's rise and should be willing to do more to maintain a balance in the region. Of course, they are more willing to contribute their fair share if they understand that the United States isn't going to do it all.
And then there's Central Asia. We're now spending $100 billion or so each year trying to defeat the Taliban and establish a functioning state in Afghanistan, and there's no end in sight if we persist in that quest. (That's why you keep getting reminded that the summer 2011 "deadline" isn't particularly firm). Getting out of Afghanistan could have significant effects there, but as I've noted before, I don't think it would have particularly significant effects on U.S. security. More to the point, it is far from obvious that investing more money and lives in that mission is going to yield positive long-term effects for U.S security. In other words-and contrary to the Obama administration's positions -- it may not matter very much for us if we win or if we lose. So if reducing defense expenditures also means getting out of the nation-building business there, fine by me.
The bottom line is that major cuts in defense spending might not be nearly as destabilizing as many people think. I'm not saying it would have no effects, but they would be less dramatic than we often assume and in some cases might even be salutary. Don't forget that continuing to live beyond our means carries ample risks too, as well as sizeable opportunity costs. And if you don't believe me, just ask our last five-star general.
Of course, this blog post is hardly a systematic study of this issue, and it's possible that I'm being overly sanguine. The question of how reduced U.S. defense budget would affect world politics cries out for systematic analysis, and it is precisely the sort of topic that our intelligence services ought to be tasked with evaluating, preferably under the guidance of a smart and independent-minded director.
Because there tens of billions of dollars at stake, we know the answers we are likely to get from the Pentagon, or from think tanks that depend on defense contractors for their livelihood. Ideally, an effort to address this question would draw upon the knowledge and expertise of academic experts, journalists with regional expertise, and some members of our diplomatic corps as well.
Disclaimer: I don't for one second believe that we are going to see defense cuts of the sorts imagined here under the Obama administration, though I think downward pressure will be hard to resist. When that happens, doomsayers will undoubtedly predict disaster if the budget is held flat. If my analysis is right and even drastic cuts would have little impact, then it follows that holding the budget flat would have no negative geopolitical effects at all.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
Citation: Stephen M. Walt, “Indispensable or insolvent?” ForeignPolicy.com, 21 June 2010.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/21/indispensable_or_insolvent
ForeignPolicy.com, 21 June 2010
If the United States reduced its defense budget significantly, how would this affect international affairs? I raise this point because one of the primary justifications for America's disproportionately high level of defense spending is the idea that U.S. military dominance is an essential stabilizing force in contemporary world politics. This argument has been advanced by scholars like William Wohlforth and Michael Mandelbaum, was implicit in Madeleine Albright's infamous characterization of the United States as the "indispensable power," and runs throughout the Clinton, Bush and now Obama versions of the National Security Strategy. It is also one of those well-established verities that are rarely questioned in the American foreign policy establishment.
Given our current budget situation, however, that assumption really ought to be questioned. The United States spends more on national security than the rest of the world combined, and a substantially larger fraction of its GDP than other major powers do. According to the 2010 edition of the IISS Military Balance, in 2008 the US spent about 4.9 percent of GDP on national security, and the defense budget has grown in real terms by about 3 percent per year since 2001. By contrast, China spent about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense, Russia 2.4% Great Britain only 2.3 percent , and German and Japan roughly 1.3 percent and 0.9 percent respectively. Lucky them.
Meanwhile, the United States has been piling up impressive amounts of red ink in recent years. The federal deficit reached 10 percent of GDP in FY2009 (the highest level since 1945), and various projections suggest that total U.S debt could reach 80 to 100 percent of GDP by FY2020. (My thanks to Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center and George Washington University, the author of an unpublished paper from which I drew these numbers). This situation led President Obama to form a bipartisan commission to study ways to reduce the federal deficit, and the president and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both made it clear that defense spending has to be part of that process.
No doubt defense contractors and congressional hawks will try to insulate DoD from significant cuts, but that position will be politically untenable if other sectors are being slashed. In fact, if we were really serious about trying to close the deficits mentioned above, we'd be looking at cuts similar to the "peace dividend" that accompanied the end of the Cold War. Measured in constant dollars, for example, the DoD budget fell 36 percent in constant dollars between 1985 and 1998, accompanied by comparable reductions in the active-duty force and the Pentagon's civilian workforce.
So here's my question: Would similar cuts today produce a dangerous shift in the structure of world politics and invite all sorts of nasty regional instability? I don't think so. If the U.S. cut defense by 20-30 percent (an enormous reduction), it would still be devoting roughly $400 billion per year to keeping Americans safe. Our national security spending would still be six times larger than China's, ten times larger than Russia's and a whopping forty times larger than Iran's. And because many militarily consequential powers are U.S. allies, its actual position is even better than those crude comparisons suggest. Thus, even seemingly draconian defense cuts would still leave the United States far stronger than any current rivals, especially if the reductions were done intelligently.
Moreover, if you look region-by-region, it's not obvious that reductions of this magnitude would change things very much. It would have little or no effect on Europe, because a large U.S. presence isn't central to European security any longer. There's little danger of serious conflict in Europe these days (and certainly no potential threat that the European states can't handle), and all that's needed from the United States is a mostly symbolic presence to help hold NATO together and remind Europeans not to let security competition reignite on the continent. And please don't try to tell me that Putin's Russia poses a resurgent threat to the rest of Europe. NATO Europe spends roughly $300 billion on defense each year compared to Russia's $40 billion; if our European allies can't handle Russia's not-very-impressive military, then they don't deserve U.S. help.
I'd say much the same thing about Latin America and Africa. Although the United States will remain diplomatically engaged with both regions (and maintain various security partnerships with states in each area), it is not likely to undertake major military operations on either continent. The United States could sustain its current level of peacetime activity in both regions with a smaller force structure, and political developments in both places have been and will probably remain largely independent of the size of the U.S. military presence or the level of U.S. defense spending. Put differently, we wouldn't be able to determine Africa's political future even if we spent ten percent of our GDP on defense, and major cuts wouldn't make much difference either.
The Persian Gulf is a different matter, but not as much as one might think. Once the United States is out of Iraq, it will be time to revert to its previous strategy of "offshore balancing." The United States has no need to control these oil-rich regions, it just wants to ensure that no single hostile power does. So long as the Gulf is divided, oil producers will continue to deliver oil to world markets where we can buy it. We can rely on local allies and naval power to preserve our access and influence, and keep a smaller version of the Rapid Deployment Force in reserve should the situation there deteriorate. Fortunately, none of the countries in the Gulf have significant power-projection capabilities, which will make it relatively easy to maintain a stable balance-of-power in the region. Remember: a reduced U.S. budget would still leave the U.S. far stronger than any other country in the world, and it would not herald a return to isolationism. The Gulf still matters, but we would have enough to protect our interests there, particularly if we allocated assets wisely.
East Asia is another place where dramatic U.S. reductions might have noticeable effects over time. America's ability to act with impunity in areas very close to China (such as the Sea of Japan, or Taiwan) might begin to erode (though it would not disappear overnight), particularly if China built up its own forces rapidly and our Asian allies did nothing in response. What this means, it seems to me, is that we would want to reallocate a larger percentage of defense assets to Asia, thereby mitigating the effects of an overall budget decrease. We also want to devote more attention to nurturing security ties with other states in the region, who are increasingly concerned about China's rise and should be willing to do more to maintain a balance in the region. Of course, they are more willing to contribute their fair share if they understand that the United States isn't going to do it all.
And then there's Central Asia. We're now spending $100 billion or so each year trying to defeat the Taliban and establish a functioning state in Afghanistan, and there's no end in sight if we persist in that quest. (That's why you keep getting reminded that the summer 2011 "deadline" isn't particularly firm). Getting out of Afghanistan could have significant effects there, but as I've noted before, I don't think it would have particularly significant effects on U.S. security. More to the point, it is far from obvious that investing more money and lives in that mission is going to yield positive long-term effects for U.S security. In other words-and contrary to the Obama administration's positions -- it may not matter very much for us if we win or if we lose. So if reducing defense expenditures also means getting out of the nation-building business there, fine by me.
The bottom line is that major cuts in defense spending might not be nearly as destabilizing as many people think. I'm not saying it would have no effects, but they would be less dramatic than we often assume and in some cases might even be salutary. Don't forget that continuing to live beyond our means carries ample risks too, as well as sizeable opportunity costs. And if you don't believe me, just ask our last five-star general.
Of course, this blog post is hardly a systematic study of this issue, and it's possible that I'm being overly sanguine. The question of how reduced U.S. defense budget would affect world politics cries out for systematic analysis, and it is precisely the sort of topic that our intelligence services ought to be tasked with evaluating, preferably under the guidance of a smart and independent-minded director.
Because there tens of billions of dollars at stake, we know the answers we are likely to get from the Pentagon, or from think tanks that depend on defense contractors for their livelihood. Ideally, an effort to address this question would draw upon the knowledge and expertise of academic experts, journalists with regional expertise, and some members of our diplomatic corps as well.
Disclaimer: I don't for one second believe that we are going to see defense cuts of the sorts imagined here under the Obama administration, though I think downward pressure will be hard to resist. When that happens, doomsayers will undoubtedly predict disaster if the budget is held flat. If my analysis is right and even drastic cuts would have little impact, then it follows that holding the budget flat would have no negative geopolitical effects at all.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
Citation: Stephen M. Walt, “Indispensable or insolvent?” ForeignPolicy.com, 21 June 2010.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/21/indispensable_or_insolvent
The Financial Crisis: A Double-Edged Sword for Budget Cuts
Laura Peterson
Budget Insight, 15 June 2010
Trying economic times present a double-edged sword for those at the budgetary wheel in Washington. On one hand, financial scarcity can promote budget trimming and encourage efficiency. On the other, it feeds political incentive to throw money at anything that might create a job or secure a vote from constituents worried about their next paycheck.
We are witnessing this dynamic play out right now in the defense budget. This may surprise Beltway old-timers who consider national security spending untouchable, but it is exactly that attitude that has pushed the budget to such heights even Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to tame it.
"Too often budgets are divvied up and doled out every year as a straight line projection of what was spent the year before," said Gates in a recent speech. "Very rarely is the activity. ever fundamentally re-examined, either in terms of quantity, type, or whether it should be conducted at all. That needs to change."
Efforts to reform the defense budget have ebbed and flowed over the years, occasionally breaking the surface only to recede with varying degrees of success. The game changer this time around is a $1.5 trillion-dollar budget deficit that is slated to hit $23 trillion by 2020. We are already paying more than $200 billion a year in net interest on the debt, a figure that's on track to hit $900 billion in ten years.
Recognizing the danger this poses to our national interest, President Obama recently appointed the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to recommend ways to keep fiscal collapse at bay. He also proposed a discretionary spending freeze across the federal government-but provided an exception for the Defense Department.
This exceptionalism reinforces the misconception that any and all defense spending is necessary during times of conflict. To counter this line of thinking, analysts from twelve non-governmental research and advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum (including Taxpayers for Common Sense) last week released a report outlining a range of options for trimming the defense budget. The recommendations could potentially save nearly one trillion dollars over the next ten years without compromising America's national security.
Suggestions for savings go beyond acquisition reform to reach every part of the Pentagon, from force structure to supply systems to the personnel and healthcare costs that Gates says are "eating the Defense Department alive." The group focused on programs that depend on unreliable or unproven technologies, mismatch or over-match military challenges or need management reforms. Recommendations include reducing military personnel in Europe, shrinking the nuclear arsenal and eliminating white elephant weapons such as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.
In recognition of our current overseas commitments, the report doesn't address wartime spending, but a look at recent budget trends shows why that's not necessary for rooting out waste: While the federal discretionary budget has nearly doubled since 2001, more than one third of that increase comes from growth in the Pentagon's base budget, excluding war costs. In fact, DOD's base budget also roughly doubled during that time. The proposed fiscal year 2011 base budget clocks in at $550 billion and would consume 56 percent of discretionary spending.
The fact is that we may not be doing our military any favors by flooding it with cash. Secretary Gates admits this influx of money only exacerbated DOD's inability to set priorities, while the Congressional Budget Office has warned that DOD's long-range plans are so expensive they are unsustainable even with modest budgetary growth. Strategy involves balancing threats against risks, and assessing risks must consider resource availability: Excluding resources from the equation only renders every objective less important in their equality. An example of this problem is the Quadrennial Defense Review, the military assessment required every four years by Congress. The QDR was originally intended to discuss the budget "required to provide sufficient resources" for its goals, but the law was later amended to accommodate those who believed it shouldn't be constrained by fiscal reality. The result is a document considered largely irrelevant both inside and outside the Pentagon.
Continuing down this dangerous path can endanger funding for necessary defense programs by making them even more expensive and unsustainable in the long run, ultimately depriving our men and women in uniform.
A fat and undisciplined defense budget also encourages bad behavior by Congress. The defense appropriations bill's girth provides plenty of places to tuck nebulous research programs and thousands of earmarks-a fact of which defense companies and lobbyists are well aware. The legislation's status as the federal government's sole "must pass" spending bill also invites lawmakers to hitch their wagons to its bumper. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA)-who convened the report task force-calls this approach "weaponized Keynesianism," in reference to politicians who criticize government attempts to stimulate the economy via domestic spending but defend weapons programs as job creators. Yet many economists point out that defense spending-especially on capital-intensive, single-use weapons-does not constitute a sustainable or efficient jobs program.
It is certainly true that economic stability and defense spending are linked. The recently released National Security Strategy correctly observes that "our prosperity serves as a wellspring of our power." It also cautions that maintaining that power will "require a disciplined approach to setting priorities and making tradeoffs." That does not mean trading off our fiscal health for short-term political gain. We can make sensible tradeoffs in our defense budget that will keep our citizens and economy safe.
Laura Peterson is a Senior Policy Analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, where she oversees the national security program. She is also a member of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Laura Peterson, “The Financial Crisis: A Double-Edged Sword for Budget Cuts,” Budget Insight, 15 June 2010. http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/the-financial-crisis-a-double-edged-sword-for-budget-cuts/
Budget Insight, 15 June 2010
Trying economic times present a double-edged sword for those at the budgetary wheel in Washington. On one hand, financial scarcity can promote budget trimming and encourage efficiency. On the other, it feeds political incentive to throw money at anything that might create a job or secure a vote from constituents worried about their next paycheck.
We are witnessing this dynamic play out right now in the defense budget. This may surprise Beltway old-timers who consider national security spending untouchable, but it is exactly that attitude that has pushed the budget to such heights even Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to tame it.
"Too often budgets are divvied up and doled out every year as a straight line projection of what was spent the year before," said Gates in a recent speech. "Very rarely is the activity. ever fundamentally re-examined, either in terms of quantity, type, or whether it should be conducted at all. That needs to change."
Efforts to reform the defense budget have ebbed and flowed over the years, occasionally breaking the surface only to recede with varying degrees of success. The game changer this time around is a $1.5 trillion-dollar budget deficit that is slated to hit $23 trillion by 2020. We are already paying more than $200 billion a year in net interest on the debt, a figure that's on track to hit $900 billion in ten years.
Recognizing the danger this poses to our national interest, President Obama recently appointed the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to recommend ways to keep fiscal collapse at bay. He also proposed a discretionary spending freeze across the federal government-but provided an exception for the Defense Department.
This exceptionalism reinforces the misconception that any and all defense spending is necessary during times of conflict. To counter this line of thinking, analysts from twelve non-governmental research and advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum (including Taxpayers for Common Sense) last week released a report outlining a range of options for trimming the defense budget. The recommendations could potentially save nearly one trillion dollars over the next ten years without compromising America's national security.
Suggestions for savings go beyond acquisition reform to reach every part of the Pentagon, from force structure to supply systems to the personnel and healthcare costs that Gates says are "eating the Defense Department alive." The group focused on programs that depend on unreliable or unproven technologies, mismatch or over-match military challenges or need management reforms. Recommendations include reducing military personnel in Europe, shrinking the nuclear arsenal and eliminating white elephant weapons such as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.
In recognition of our current overseas commitments, the report doesn't address wartime spending, but a look at recent budget trends shows why that's not necessary for rooting out waste: While the federal discretionary budget has nearly doubled since 2001, more than one third of that increase comes from growth in the Pentagon's base budget, excluding war costs. In fact, DOD's base budget also roughly doubled during that time. The proposed fiscal year 2011 base budget clocks in at $550 billion and would consume 56 percent of discretionary spending.
The fact is that we may not be doing our military any favors by flooding it with cash. Secretary Gates admits this influx of money only exacerbated DOD's inability to set priorities, while the Congressional Budget Office has warned that DOD's long-range plans are so expensive they are unsustainable even with modest budgetary growth. Strategy involves balancing threats against risks, and assessing risks must consider resource availability: Excluding resources from the equation only renders every objective less important in their equality. An example of this problem is the Quadrennial Defense Review, the military assessment required every four years by Congress. The QDR was originally intended to discuss the budget "required to provide sufficient resources" for its goals, but the law was later amended to accommodate those who believed it shouldn't be constrained by fiscal reality. The result is a document considered largely irrelevant both inside and outside the Pentagon.
Continuing down this dangerous path can endanger funding for necessary defense programs by making them even more expensive and unsustainable in the long run, ultimately depriving our men and women in uniform.
A fat and undisciplined defense budget also encourages bad behavior by Congress. The defense appropriations bill's girth provides plenty of places to tuck nebulous research programs and thousands of earmarks-a fact of which defense companies and lobbyists are well aware. The legislation's status as the federal government's sole "must pass" spending bill also invites lawmakers to hitch their wagons to its bumper. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA)-who convened the report task force-calls this approach "weaponized Keynesianism," in reference to politicians who criticize government attempts to stimulate the economy via domestic spending but defend weapons programs as job creators. Yet many economists point out that defense spending-especially on capital-intensive, single-use weapons-does not constitute a sustainable or efficient jobs program.
It is certainly true that economic stability and defense spending are linked. The recently released National Security Strategy correctly observes that "our prosperity serves as a wellspring of our power." It also cautions that maintaining that power will "require a disciplined approach to setting priorities and making tradeoffs." That does not mean trading off our fiscal health for short-term political gain. We can make sensible tradeoffs in our defense budget that will keep our citizens and economy safe.
Laura Peterson is a Senior Policy Analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, where she oversees the national security program. She is also a member of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Laura Peterson, “The Financial Crisis: A Double-Edged Sword for Budget Cuts,” Budget Insight, 15 June 2010. http://budgetinsight.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/the-financial-crisis-a-double-edged-sword-for-budget-cuts/
Defense cuts: start overseas
Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble
Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2010
U.S. defense spending is too large, especially abroad; we're spending too much to defend allies capable of defending themselves.
Recent reporting has claimed that the Pentagon is fighting to trim the defense budget, valiantly protecting taxpayer dollars against a wasteful Congress and tackling the ballooning federal deficit.
There are two problems with that claim. For one, the fiscal year 2011 defense budget, which Congress is set to adopt, actually increases spending, though at a slightly reduced rate, which only in Washington would be considered a "cut."
Second, and most critical, the latest Pentagon authorization does nothing to address the cause of U.S. military spending profligacy: overambitious and nonessential objectives overseas.
The truth is that the U.S. no longer has a "defense" budget. The adjective is wrong. Our military forces' size long ago ceased to have any meaningful attachment to the requirements of protecting Americans.
The Pentagon is the conduit for more than a fifth of our federal spending, and it accounts for about 65% of the $583-billion increase in annual discretionary spending since 2001.
But the dirty secret of American defense politics is that we are fairly safe.
We are surrounded by vast seas and friendly neighbors. But our military spending is nearly equal to half the world's, and our allies spend most of the other half. Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and Iran collectively spend about a fourth of what we do on defense, according to statistics compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even if we cut our military in half, it would still be far bigger than that of any conceivable rival.
Encouragingly, members of President Obama's bipartisan commission on the deficit and debt have said that the military ought to be among the items on the table for possible spending cuts. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Ron Paul (R- Texas) last month sent a joint letter to the commissioners arguing that the trims to the Pentagon budget should flow from cuts in overseas commitments.
The commissioners should take that advice.
The Cold War is over. While we were defending our allies in Europe and Asia, they got wealthy. The new status quo is that we offer them perpetual security subsidies - and risk being drawn into wars that do not serve our security interests.
The recent trouble regarding the sinking of a South Korean naval ship by Pyongyang is illustrative. Odious as North Korea is, we have no obvious interest in fighting for South Korea, which has grown far richer and militarily capable than its northern rival. South Korea can defend itself. So can our European and Japanese friends.
Nor can terrorism justify a huge military. Most of our military spending goes to conventional forces adept at destroying well-armed enemies. Terrorists are lightly armed and mostly hidden. The trick is finding them, not killing or capturing them once they are found. Counterinsurgency enthusiasts claim that we can only be safe from terrorists by using ground forces to rebuild the states where they operate. But we have learned the hard way that theory badly overestimates our ability to organize other nations' politics. Even if we could master that imperial art, it would not be worth the cost.
By avoiding the occupation of failing states and shedding commitments to defend healthy ones, we could plan for far fewer wars, allowing cuts in force structure, manpower, procurement spending and operational costs. The resulting force would be more elite, less strained and far less expensive.
Even if the commission calls for cutting defense commitments, the Obama administration has shown little interest in following such recommendations. When the Japanese government recently asked us to remove our Marines from Okinawa after 65 years, for example, the administration hectored Tokyo into letting us keep our base rather than wishing the Japanese well and bringing the troops home.
Instead of looking to shed missions, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently advocated maintaining current funding levels while cutting overhead costs by a few billion to fund frontline forces. Good idea, except that it won't offset the rapidly rising cost of the military's personnel, healthcare and operational spending. The likely result will be that these accounts will continue to take funds needed for manpower and force structure, leaving a shrinking force overburdened even in peacetime.
Our deficit problem is an opportunity to surrender the pretension that we are the world's indispensable nation, preventing instability, shaping the international system and guiding history. We should be content to settle for being the big kid on the block that looks out for itself and occasionally helps friends in a bad spot. That approach would take advantage of the security we have, and save money we don't.
Benjamin Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute, where Christopher Preble is director of foreign policy studies. They are members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble, “Defense cuts: start overseas,“ Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/14/opinion/la-oe-0614-preble-militarycuts-20100614
Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2010
U.S. defense spending is too large, especially abroad; we're spending too much to defend allies capable of defending themselves.
Recent reporting has claimed that the Pentagon is fighting to trim the defense budget, valiantly protecting taxpayer dollars against a wasteful Congress and tackling the ballooning federal deficit.
There are two problems with that claim. For one, the fiscal year 2011 defense budget, which Congress is set to adopt, actually increases spending, though at a slightly reduced rate, which only in Washington would be considered a "cut."
Second, and most critical, the latest Pentagon authorization does nothing to address the cause of U.S. military spending profligacy: overambitious and nonessential objectives overseas.
The truth is that the U.S. no longer has a "defense" budget. The adjective is wrong. Our military forces' size long ago ceased to have any meaningful attachment to the requirements of protecting Americans.
The Pentagon is the conduit for more than a fifth of our federal spending, and it accounts for about 65% of the $583-billion increase in annual discretionary spending since 2001.
But the dirty secret of American defense politics is that we are fairly safe.
We are surrounded by vast seas and friendly neighbors. But our military spending is nearly equal to half the world's, and our allies spend most of the other half. Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and Iran collectively spend about a fourth of what we do on defense, according to statistics compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even if we cut our military in half, it would still be far bigger than that of any conceivable rival.
Encouragingly, members of President Obama's bipartisan commission on the deficit and debt have said that the military ought to be among the items on the table for possible spending cuts. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Ron Paul (R- Texas) last month sent a joint letter to the commissioners arguing that the trims to the Pentagon budget should flow from cuts in overseas commitments.
The commissioners should take that advice.
The Cold War is over. While we were defending our allies in Europe and Asia, they got wealthy. The new status quo is that we offer them perpetual security subsidies - and risk being drawn into wars that do not serve our security interests.
The recent trouble regarding the sinking of a South Korean naval ship by Pyongyang is illustrative. Odious as North Korea is, we have no obvious interest in fighting for South Korea, which has grown far richer and militarily capable than its northern rival. South Korea can defend itself. So can our European and Japanese friends.
Nor can terrorism justify a huge military. Most of our military spending goes to conventional forces adept at destroying well-armed enemies. Terrorists are lightly armed and mostly hidden. The trick is finding them, not killing or capturing them once they are found. Counterinsurgency enthusiasts claim that we can only be safe from terrorists by using ground forces to rebuild the states where they operate. But we have learned the hard way that theory badly overestimates our ability to organize other nations' politics. Even if we could master that imperial art, it would not be worth the cost.
By avoiding the occupation of failing states and shedding commitments to defend healthy ones, we could plan for far fewer wars, allowing cuts in force structure, manpower, procurement spending and operational costs. The resulting force would be more elite, less strained and far less expensive.
Even if the commission calls for cutting defense commitments, the Obama administration has shown little interest in following such recommendations. When the Japanese government recently asked us to remove our Marines from Okinawa after 65 years, for example, the administration hectored Tokyo into letting us keep our base rather than wishing the Japanese well and bringing the troops home.
Instead of looking to shed missions, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently advocated maintaining current funding levels while cutting overhead costs by a few billion to fund frontline forces. Good idea, except that it won't offset the rapidly rising cost of the military's personnel, healthcare and operational spending. The likely result will be that these accounts will continue to take funds needed for manpower and force structure, leaving a shrinking force overburdened even in peacetime.
Our deficit problem is an opportunity to surrender the pretension that we are the world's indispensable nation, preventing instability, shaping the international system and guiding history. We should be content to settle for being the big kid on the block that looks out for itself and occasionally helps friends in a bad spot. That approach would take advantage of the security we have, and save money we don't.
Benjamin Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute, where Christopher Preble is director of foreign policy studies. They are members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Citation: Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble, “Defense cuts: start overseas,“ Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/14/opinion/la-oe-0614-preble-militarycuts-20100614