By Emelie Rutherford
Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.), President Obama’s nominee for Army secretary, pledged at his confirmation hearing last week to help fully implement the new acquisition reform act he helped write and to give Congress his candid views on budget needs.
No Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) members raised alarms about McHugh’s qualifications during the July 30 hearing, and panel leaders said they want him to be confirmed by the full Senate before senators leave the Capitol for a recess next week.
“That is our goal,” SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said. In a show of bipartisan support for McHugh, his fellow New Yorker Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced him.
McHugh, a 16-year member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), served as the panel’s ranking Republican from January until shortly after Obama nominated him in June to be the Army’s next civilian leader.
McHugh and other defense panel leaders in Congress helped this year to pass a defense acquisition reform act that mandates more oversight of defense programs in the early developmental stages.
McHugh told Levin, with whom he worked on the reform measure, that if confirmed he would pick up the tricky process of implementing it within the Pentagon.
“If we don’t follow through with the fullest extent of the force of the law, then all of us have wasted our time,” McHugh said. The “biggest challenge” regarding the new statute, he said, will be designating 20,000 new contract officials within the Department of Defense.
McHugh noted that the new law only covers 20 percent of defense acquisitions, and that HASC Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) wants to pass further legislation reforming the purchase of the other 80 percent.
“If I am confirmed I promise to you as Army secretary that I stand ready to work with you and make sure that we try to close that gap as well,” McHugh said. “(There is) too much money out there, too many wasted dollars, too many dollars potentially to be saved that could be spent far better on those men and women who have so many needs that still exist.”
SASC member Susan Collins (R-Maine) raised concerns to McHugh about the recent revelation the services will have to identify $60 billion in savings over the next five years.
“It seems to me that the defense budget should reflect our military needs and requirements and be informed by the Quadrennial Defense Review, the QDR, which is underway now,” Collins said.
McHugh said that speaking as a member of the HASC he agrees with Collins, but that he does not have detailed information on this latest budget development.
“My initial reaction when reading the press reports about the assumptions in the programming budget instructions was that that is probably not an unwise thing to do,” he said. “I place it under the rubric–and this is a hope, it’s not based on knowledge–…of ‘hope for the best and plan for the worst.'”
McHugh on the HASC earlier this year was outspoken in voicing concerns about how the Pentagon approached the fiscal year budget, questioning the analysis behind changes including reduced missile-defense spending (Defense Daily, June 3).
He told the SASC that, if confirmed, he would tell lawmakers what he believes the Army’s true military needs are in the budget.
“We all have to live within the (White House) Office of Management and Budget’s directives, but that does not in anyway obviate the prerogatives of this Congress, this committee in their role,” McHugh told the SASC. “And I have sat in far too many committee hearings and heard things that were perhaps not as accurate as I would have liked to have been, and that would not be a policy I would endorse.”
Properly equipping the force is one of two main challenges the Army faces, with the other being addressing stress on soldiers, McHugh said in written answers to the SASC’s questions.
He wrote that the Army’s modernization investment strategy is “built on assessing the likelihood of evolving threats and planning future capabilities to mitigate those threats.”
“It is an imprecise science, requires almost constant review and correction, and must balance investments in future development with improvements to today’s equipment,: he added. “If confirmed, I plan a thorough review of these investments.”
In response to another advance-policy question, McHugh said he agrees with the assertion that instability in funding and requirements for major defense acquisition programs leads to increased costs and delays.
“To address funding and requirements stability, the Army must increase the fidelity of cost estimates, avoid the too rapid adoption of immature technology, improve the quality of systems engineering, control growth in requirements, and, when appropriate, use incremental builds,” he wrote.
Two Obama nominations in addition to McHugh’s were vetted at the hearing: of Joseph Westphal to be under secretary of the Army and Juan Garcia to be the assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs.