Former military leaders struggled to identify aspects of the Pentagon budget ripe for cutting yesterday, when they testified before lawmakers preparing to make recommendations to a deficit-reducing panel.
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) asked retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper and retired Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody at a hearing yesterday: “Where do you see where we could make savings within the current budget?”
Smith has taken a slightly different stance on the prospect of additional Pentagon cuts, as part of ongoing deficit-cutting deliberations, than has HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.). McKeon has emerged as a leading voice in Congress against additional military reductions, which are being weighed by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. Smith highlighted yesterday the possibility of a sequestration process triggering roughly $500 billion in automatic long-term defense cuts if the deficit committee and Congress can’t agree on a plan to cut up to $1.5 trillion in federal spending by Dec. 23.
The HASC is slated to deliver its recommendations to the deficit committee by the end of next week.
“I know what this committee would like to do is to focus on the Department of Defense and national security and simply say that, ‘Look, these cuts are unacceptable for this reason, and as far as where you get the money, well, that’s somebody else’s problem, but here’s why it is absolutely critical to our national security that we not cut below this level,’” Smith said. “But I think we do so at our own peril. We have to consider the rest of the budget. If we as a committee are going to present a plan that says the defense budget has to be at this level, then it better fit within a realistic budget. We’d better be prepared to talk about where we’re going to get the revenue to fund that or, if we don’t want to get the revenue to fund that, how much are we going to cut the other programs?”
Smith said these deliberations include making “some hard choices” and looking “at why we spend the money we spend in the Department of Defense.” Questions include if the Navy should keep the goal of growing its fleet to 313 ships and if the overall force structure should be reduced, he said.
Cody said trying to identify defense savings is “a dilemma,” considering the military has cut 240 programs over the past 10 years as it adjusted for asymmetrical and irregular warfare following the so-called procurement holiday in the 1990s. He said there are “cuts to be made,” and noted that the Pentagon already has worked to identify hundreds of billions of dollars in savings during a time of war.
“I think there are more places you can go, but I warn that if you’re talking about significant cuts to end strength, if you’re talking about significant cuts to resetting the force, and not maintaining the programs, I don’t know where we’re going to be if something goes wrong,” Cody said.
Asked if the government needs more revenue to fund U.S. national-security needs, Cody said more taxes may be needed.
“Putting our fiscal house in order is important, but we need to be very, very careful about the choices and chances we take with national security right now,” he said.
Jumper, meanwhile, noted in the past decade the military has given up $46 billion worth of research and development through cancelled weapons programs. Still, the former Air Force leader said some areas of the defense budget should be examined, including “our tactical nuclear forces as a part of our NATO alliance and how much of that we really need.” Jumper also called for examining how much forward stationing the military really needs “as we relook at the structure of our alliances around the world.”
In the area of logistics, he said he thinks “we could find ways to restructure to let industry best practices in and save ourselves a tremendous amount of money as we look forward to resetting.”
The cuts the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction are due to propose by Nov. 23 will be in addition to a first round of federal spending reductions made in August by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which the Pentagon said cuts $450 billion over the next decade from its spending plans.
McKeon said yesterday he wants people to understand that roughly half of the cuts to discretionary spending in that first round of cuts came from the military.
“We’re not saying that defense shouldn’t be a part of this, it’s been a heavy part,” the HASC chairman said. “The purpose of these hearings is to give us a chance to let experienced people tell us what these cuts are really going to mean when the rubber hits the road.”