Members of the House Armed Services Committee and representatives of the National Defense Panel seemed to reach an impasse when discussing the Defense Department’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review the panel was set up to review: panel members fundamentally believe the Pentagon needs more flexibility and authority to control its spending and its drawdown during sequestration, and lawmakers say a “trust deficit” keeps them from ceding any control to the Obama administration.
During her opening statements, National Defense Panel member and former undersecretary of defense for policy Michele Flournoy described five “bottom lines” in the panel’s report: the national security environment is becoming more complex, an aggressive approach to reform is needed, declining readiness levels will lead to slower response times and increased casualties, cuts to modernization now will ultimately cost the Pentagon more to procure the platforms it needs, and force structure has been trimmed below what the defense strategy requires.
On the issue of reform, Flournoy said, “we also argue for a very aggressive approach to reform, and that includes giving whoever the next secretary is the kinds of authorities that previous secretaries were given to manage periods of challenge and drawdown.” She said former defense secretary William Perry was given authority for Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) and Reduction in Force (RIF), and that the next secretary should additionally be given authority to make compensation reforms.
Several lawmakers, however, shot back that they didn’t trust the Pentagon enough to provide more authority or flexibility.
“When we talk about giving the Pentagon more discretion, one of the reasons we’re reluctant to do that is we don’t think the Pentagon is always making the Pentagon’s decisions. Often times we feel here, we don’t have a comfort level, we think the White House is making too many of those decisions,” HASC Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes (R-Va.) said. He added that if he saw the Pentagon making more decisions that seemed in the best interest of national security rather than the White House agenda, he’d be inclined to grant more authority.
Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) later said that “I do think that if we had leadership that was able to operate based on what was in the best interest of the national security, I think you’d see much more support from this committee for that leeway that you asked for.” He said that, given that American spending on interest on the national debt was going to surpass spending on defense by 2021, he worries that the president is using defense funds as “a piggybank to fund social programs.”
“In the four years I’ve been here, we’ve had three different secretaries of defense–that’s not good for the country,” Scott said. “It seems to me that the president is trying to micromanage national security instead of putting good people in place and letting them do their job.”
In response to Scott’s comments, Flournoy said that “I have not seen evidence that the White House is micromanaging the DoD programming and budgeting process. What I’ve seen is that since 2011…DoD’s been battling with two rounds of [Budget Control Act] cuts totaling a trillion dollars, sequestration that doesn’t allow them any flexibility to move money around between accounts, and a life of [continuing resolutions]. So you have this constant uncertainty, unpredictability that’s causing the services, in one case last year, to do seven different versions of the [program objective memorandums]. And they are just trying to survive the next budget bogey as opposed to doing the kind of strategic planning that you’re calling for. I think the reason for that is the BCA cuts and the sequestration more than it is any sort of outside interference, as far as I can see.”
The committee seemed unconvinced.
Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) said later in the hearing that “when you have this trust deficit, and it was mentioned by several different members, is that we don’t necessarily know if the Pentagon’s making the right decisions or some of these decisions are coming from the White House.” He added that the Pentagon achieving auditability and pursuing acquisition reform would give lawmakers some confidence in the department and its spending.
Flournoy and fellow panel member and former undersecretary of defense for policy Eric Edelman both said that reform should be pursued on the Pentagon’s end but that Congress needed to reciprocate and give a higher level of funding to help DoD function efficiently.
“I also think it’s fair to say that even if we had wild success in implementing reform and were able to reap all of the savings that everybody anticipates, I don’t think it would still begin to touch the deficit we are facing in terms of the budget and funding the department to be able to meet the challenges that it’s facing right now,” Edelman said.
Flournoy agreed, adding “our judgment as a panel is that (reform) would be necessary but not sufficient to get to the spending levels we need…I think we should look at lifting it in general. What we really need is a comprehensive budget deal with all of the key elements on the table: entitlement reform, tax reform, and smart investment in what will drive the dynamism in the American economy in the future. That’s what we really need. And that would be the best way to handle this challenge. Short of that, some sort of smaller deals that create relief for the department in the near term I think would be very important.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) followed up on that later, noting that he’d love to repeal sequestration and return to the regular order of passing budgets on time, but he doesn’t see those things happening just yet.
Asked by Wenstrup what other steps Congress could take to help, Flournoy responded that “in some of these really challenging, politically-sensitive areas to explore the idea of pilots or experiments. Allow us to try–allow the department, I should say, to try a change and see if, for example, you could get better quality of care at lower cost in a part of health care. If the Congress feels it’s too risky to kind of swallow across-the-board reform, let the department try something and see if it works. And then let it scale. But to just say, ‘no, it’s off the table because it’s too high risk or it’s too sensitive’–it’s not a viable solution.”