By Emelie Rutherford
Administration and congressional leaders announced new initiatives yesterday to scour the Pentagon budget for savings.
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) said he will craft a plan in the near future for his committee to identify savings in the Defense Department’s budget. Also, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed the Pentagon and all federal agencies to identify their worst-performing programs before the fiscal year 2012 budget is written.
These developments come after Pentagon leaders announced an effort last Friday to identify $100 billion in funding over the next five years that can be diverted within the department’s budget to higher-priority warfighting and operational needs (Defense Daily, June 7, 2010).
Skelton told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast yesterday he takes Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ talk about the need for more-efficient defense spending “very seriously.”
Skelton is weighing three options: authorizing the HASC’s recently disbanded Defense Acquisition Reform Panel to search for additional ways to save money within the Pentagon, creating a new defense-savings panel comprised of members of each HASC subcommittee, or charging each of those subcommittees with identifying a specified amount of Pentagon savings.
“I have not yet decided what to do, but I’m taking it very seriously, and I will do one of those very, very soon,” Skelton said.
He said he wants to find efficiencies and savings within the Pentagon’s budget, and is not advocating for cutting the overall amount of funding.
“It’s not just a matter of dollars, it’s how you spend them,” he said.
Skelton cautioned against personnel-related cuts, saying “It bothers me to see end strength as a bill payer.”
He cited a desire for “more systems that work well” and for increasing the size of the military “for a rainy day.” He spoke favorably about investments in cybersecurity and missiles, and said he feels “very strongly about increasing the size of the Navy” from one with a 287-vessel fleet to 313 ships.
Skelton talked of studying the purchase of smaller non-nuclear submarines, and acknowledged the high projected cost of the planned SSBN(X) Ohio-class submarine replacement. He highlighted provisions in the House’s FY ’11 defense authorization bill, which the chamber passed May 28, to curtail the Navy’s practice of retiring ships. He also said he believes the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle will continue to be scrutinized, and that the Pentagon may again try to cancel it.
Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), meanwhile, told Defense Daily yesterday his committee has no specific plans for creating sub-panels for identifying Pentagon savings, like those Skleton is eyeing.
“I want my entire committee to focus on it, I wouldn’t create a subcommittee,” Levin said.
Also yesterday, OMB Director Peter Orszag and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel directed federal agencies in a memo to “identify the programs and subprograms that have the lowest impact on your agency’s mission and constitute at least five percent of your agency’s discretionary spending.”
While the Pentagon would be required to cite these low-impact programs in its FY ’12 budget proposal, it would not necessarily have to actually cut them. That’s because the White House is not calling on the Pentagon to also identify 5 percent in budget cuts for next year, as it is requiring all non-security agencies to do.
“Your agency should evaluate programs based on their impact on your agency’s mission and relevant presidential initiatives,” Orszag and Emanuel say in spelling out the criteria for the identifying the low-impact programs. “In doing so, your agency should consider whether the program has an unclear or duplicative purpose, uncertain federal role, completed mission, or lack of demonstrated effectiveness.”
While the Defense Department will not have to include “mandatory programs” in the 5 percent total, the OMB says it encourages each agency “to separately list low-impact mandatory programs as part of the submission.”
The Pentagon will have to submit the requested information with its FY ’12 budget submission to OMB, which is due Sept. 13.
In Congress, work continues on the FY ’11 Defense Authorization Bill. Levin said he still hoped the Senate will take up the SASC-approved legislation before the Fourth of July holiday, but had not received a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Levin and Skelton both downplayed OMB’s threat to recommend President Barack Obama veto the defense policy bill if it authorizes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s second engine, developed by General Electric [GE] and Rolls-Royce. The alternate engine is included in the House-passed bill but not the SASC version. Still, Levin supports it.
“I don’t view the veto threat on the engine quite frankly credible, if the entire bill is acceptable…to the president,” Levin said. However, he acknowledged the White House has qualms with other items lawmakers want in the legislation.
The House and SASC bills both would repeal the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military, a move the White House supports.
“It’s rather interesting, because there is an item in the bill, assuming things go through, called Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and that the president felt keenly strong about,” Skelton said. “Now will he veto a bill that has that in it, especially in light of the vote of the House being substantial as it was on (supporting) the two engine issue, historians are going to love that one.”
Gates has argued the Pentagon cannot afford sending $3 billion to continue developing the second engine, the engine proposal itself is based on unrealistic cost estimates, and its design may be flawed.
Asked about the political risks Obama would face in vetoing the defense bill over the second engine, Skelton said the debate “is a matter of jobs.”
“Two engines, obviously, you’re going to have more people working,” he said. “(Supporting) jobs is pretty important.”
Skelton, though, said he primarily supports the F-35 alternate engine because he believes continuing to develop it, along with the primary engine, will ensure the aircraft is reliable and affordable.