The Pentagon is looking to cut more funding from its headquarters, defense agencies, and combatant commands as it scours its budget for cost savings, its No. 2 official said.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said yesterday at the National Press Club that this effort–to cut funding from the Pentagon’s so-called “fourth estate”–is intended to shield the Pentagon from further budget cuts imposed by politicians.
“Making better use of taxpayer dollars is important not only in its own right, since every dollar that’s wasted could be used for the nation’s defense, but is also important in order to win the taxpayers’ confidence that they are getting full value for their defense dollar,” Carter said. “This is a confidence we must earn to get the public and Congress to support a reasonable level of defense spending, such as the president’s budget contains.”
Carter’s remarks came as the Pentagon is in the final weeks of a Strategic Choices and Management Review. Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey are reexamining the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance in light of current budget uncertainty. Their review, due May 31, will consider multiple budgeting scenarios. Those include if Congress keeps the $500 billion in longterm “sequestration” defense cuts, and if President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal–which does away with sequestration–is adopted.
Carter said during the Pentagon’s push to gain the public’s confidence that they are getting “full value for their defense dollar,” military leaders have begun “driving down the tail to strengthen the tooth.”
“In this regard we are placing great emphasis on reducing the cost of what we in the Pentagon call the fourth estate, which consists of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the staffs of the combatant commanders, and the defense agencies,” he said.
The “fourth estate” does not include the departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It makes up a fifth of the Pentagon’s budget and “merits at least as much scrutiny as the military services’ budgets,” he said.
“There are real savings to be realized here.”
Pentagon headquarters functions make up just a “small part” of the fourth estate. It also is made up of entities like the Defense Logistics Agency, which handles all logistics including in Afghanistan.
“I believe that we need to shrink those headquarters functions also, at least as much as everything else is shrinking,” Carter said. “But, that’s not where most of the money is. Most of it is in the so-called field agencies, combat-support agencies.”
He said such agencies do “important work,” but “need to fall under the same level of scrutiny that we have to apply to the Navy and the Army and the Air Force in these times.”
“We pay attention to every nickel we spend, wherever it is,” he added.