Conservatives Rethink Defense Spending Reform as Budget Debate Looms
HERITAGE
The Day
Katie Koch
Boston University Washington News Service
3/26/09
WASHINGTON—The Defense Department must reform how it acquires its weapons and other military goods, a leading conservative group said Thursday. But these reforms, the Heritage Foundation said, should give the military more freedom to pursue new projects, not less.
“The defense acquisition process is probably overregulated, not underregulated,” said Baker Spring, a research fellow at the foundation.
Speaking at a Heritage panel on procurement reform, Spring criticized Congress for its “excessive micromanagement” of the defense budget. He also targeted the military for its “risk-averse mentality,” a result of the “layers of bureaucracy” governing the acquisition process.
Spring said Congress must abandon its “illusory goal of a one-size-fits-all, rules-based acquisition process” and allow the Pentagon more leeway in acquiring and developing new technologies.
“Congress needs to restrain itself and do what is really best for the country instead of balkanizing this issue,” he said.
In the fight to preserve costly defense projects—and in many cases, to shield such projects from extensive oversight—conservatives have often been the military’s closest allies. They have been more inclined to support long-term, expensive defense projects such as the Navy’s Virginia-class submarines, which are contracted through Groton’s Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corp.
Yet as defense spending has come under harsher scrutiny in recent months, conservative institutions like Heritage and their Republican counterparts in Congress may be readjusting to the new debate. In the current economic climate, military supporters say, all spending must be justified.
During the Cold War, “it was a dangerous world, but it was pretty easy” to secure funds for defense projects, said Gen. Dennis Reimer, former Army chief of staff, who spoke at the Heritage panel.
“Now we’re in a capabilities-based world, and we’re in an economic crisis,” he said. “We can’t afford to have as inefficient a system as we have today and still get the best bang for our buck.”
In his press conference on Tuesday, President Barack Obama called for a “more disciplined” defense budget. His proposed budget would leave defense spending roughly equivalent to what it was under President George W. Bush after adjusting for inflation.
“Where the savings should come in,” Obama said, “is how do we reform our procurement system so that it keeps America safe and we’re not wasting taxpayer dollars?”
Conservatives, however, worry that the President will ask Congress for less supplemental spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which they say will drain the defense budget and cause long-term military projects to suffer.
“It’s really a peacetime budget,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior national security policy analyst at Heritage. “The notion that cuts can be made without a subsequent change in our defense strategy is unwise and risky.”
On Wednesday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and 13 other Republican senators sent a letter to the President criticizing his proposed defense budget. The senators warned against allowing the military to go on a weapons “procurement holiday,” which they said happened during the Clinton administration.
“Obama’s budget will decrease the overall defense spending, with cuts likely coming from defense acquisition,” a spokeswoman for Cornyn said.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who also served under President George W. Bush, has echoed Obama’s call for defense spending reform.
“Secretary Gates has a much larger mandate [under this administration], and will be tackling these issues,” Eaglen said.
Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in policy at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview Thursday afternoon he does not believe that Congress is causing unnecessary problems for military programs.
“The problem is not that good programs get canceled [by Congress], it’s that there may be inefficiencies in the way bureaucracies work that drive up costs,” O’Hanlon said.
He also said that talk of another “procurement holiday” is overblown.
“We can’t afford it in terms of [the military’s] equipment stocks,” he said. “But there may be selective cuts to certain programs.”
At Thursday’s panel, speakers outlined various ways to reform the military’s acquisition programs.
“Congress has a tendency to second guess…and intervene in the acquisition process,” Michael Wynne, former secretary of the Air Force, said.
Therefore, “we need to keep the acquisition criteria simple,” he said. “We need to minimize the kind of criteria that have been fertile ground for protest.”
Spring argued that no reform would be possible without a higher budget to provide for the military’s needs in Iraq and Afghanistan and at home.
“If you don’t have an adequate defense budget, no amount of reform is going to get you the force that you want,” Spring said.
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