As the House Armed Services Committee works on its fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act –which will likely include some but not all ideas for acquisition and pay and benefits reform–the reforms should lead to more efficient procurement and personnel systems but may not immediately equate to budgetary savings.
HASC Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) told reporters Tuesday that the committee this week had hosted an informal roundtable with the military services’ acquisition chiefs and held a classified briefing on technological superiority, with a focus on American technology compared to Chinese and Russian advances.
In light of these discussions, Thornberry said his focus is, “how can we make the system more agile to be more responsive so that more up-to-date technology gets fielded faster? Because adversaries or potential adversaries are moving pretty fast, and if we don’t speed up then we’re going to be left behind. So there may be some financial savings that come from that–which I think is really important to keep within the [Defense] Department so it can be reinvested in other capabilities–but I don’t know about dollar amounts.”
This approach–to improve the procurement process and let the reforms generate whatever savings may come–is somewhat different than that of Thornberry’s predecessor. In the FY ’15 NDAA cycle, former HASC chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) sought to improve Pentagon oversight of its service contracts by cutting dozens of line items in the Defense Department budget request by $500,000, $1 million or even $2 million. Rather than providing guidance for how to negotiate these savings in service contracts, McKeon labeled the cuts “reduction in service contracts for facilities maintenance” and “reduction in contracts for other services” and insisted the Pentagon could achieve these required savings if it paid as close attention to its service contracts as it did to contracts for weapons and vehicles.
“If we can’t find 5 percent savings out of that then shame on us. I think we can do that, and I think we can do it very well,” he said last spring (Defense Daily, May 6, 2014).
Thornberry is applying his approach to acquisition reform to pay and benefits reform as well. He praised the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission for its focus on the effectiveness of incentives, not the cost.
“When [the commissioners] started this, they looked at what sort of pay and benefits were effective in achieving their intended goals and which ones were not,” Thornberry told reporters. “They did not go into it with the attitude of, where can we cut money. And I think the way they looked at it is exactly the right way to look at it. What’s effective? What’s not? And then look at the fiscal impact of various proposals after that. But the key thing is our people, because it’s our most valuable asset.
“We cannot take for granted that we will always continue to get and keep top quality people,” he said. “And you think, for example, about cyber: the government will be competing with Google on this top-quality talent. So do we have a pay and benefits structure that can compete in that realm? That’s the key question to ask.”
Thornberry said he had not seen the commission’s recommendations, which it will unveil on Thursday. He said he would wait to see what the commission proposes before commenting on whether he’ll accept the ideas or not, but he stressed that the commission’s final report is not “an all-or-nothing proposition. There may be some things they propose that we could do relatively quickly. Other things may take more study…It is so important, the incentives that we put in place as far as recruitment and retention for the future–I just want to make sure we have given appropriate time to it, I don’t want to rush it. On the other hand, if there are things that people pretty much understand the consequences of, pretty much agree to, then we can do some of it now and maybe some of it later. So we’ll see exactly what all the recommendations are.”
Officials throughout DoD have warned that personnel costs are ballooning and making it impossible to pay for needed equipment maintenance and modernization, training and operating costs and research and development. Congress has been unwilling to accept the Pentagon’s proposed cuts to Tricare and other benefits for the past few budget cycles, insisting on waiting until the commission reported back so it could tackle reform all at once instead of imposing piecemeal changes on troops and veterans.