Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new belt-tightening initiatives at the Department of Defense are a positive step forward. But much more must be done to maximize the value of taxpayers’ defense dollars.

Several of Gates’ reforms reflect those long recommended by TCS and other watchdog groups. For example, Gates pledged to focus on contractors performing inherently governmental functions when cutting funds for services contractors by 10 percent each year for the next three years. He also required cost estimates for every new policy, program or other new initiative. 

But the headlines on news stories trumpeting thousands of jobs eliminated and budget bloodletting offer a lesson in why discipline is so difficult to impose on defense spending. Virginia lawmakers criticized a directive to close the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) in Norfolk, VA — which employs some 5,000 military personnel and contractors and costs nearly a quarter billion dollars per year — as a threat to national security, despite the fact that the closure was originally recommended by an independent DOD panel last month. 

In fact, as Gates took pains to make clear, DOD’s top-line budget will not change: Any savings from these initiatives will be plowed back into DOD “force structure and modernization.” And savings are hardly assured since many of the eliminated functions will apparently be transferred elsewhere in DOD.  

Gates places elements of his plan onto four “tracks.” The first, announced last year, asks the military services to independently cut $100 billion over the next five years. The second solicits advice from outside organizations, including TCS (see our recommendations in this letter to DOD Comptroller Robert Hale). The third will conduct a department-wide review of DOD operations in preparation for the FY2012 budget, an effort that includes a recent procurement reform initiative from acquisitions chief Ashton Carter. The final fourth is comprised of “Sec Def-led efforts” aiming “to instill a culture of savings and financial restraint within DOD,” according to Gates. These directives include: 

• Eliminating DOD’s Business Transformation Agency and a Secretary of Defense (OSD) office on Network and Information Integration
• Freezing top-level staffing in offices including the OSD, combatant commands and Senior Executive Service
• Cutting money spent on generating advisory reports by 25 percent and publishing the cost of each such report in the beginning of each document
• Cutting contracting for intelligence functions by 10 percent and freezing staffing for all intel-related senior executives

Gates framed his effort as a preemptive strike against members of Congress who he feared would gut the defense budget in their effort to demonstrate fiscal restraint at a time of record federal deficits. Anyone familiar with the appropriations committees, however, would be hard pressed to believe those lawmakers would want to shrink a pie they’ve been gorging on for years. Compare the roughly $600 million in annual savings Gates claims from closing JFCOM and the Business Transformation Center to the $1.2 billion in earmarks added to the FY2011 spending bill just last month by the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Taxpayers will have spent $40 million over the past two years alone on two namesake institutions dedicated to lawmakers John Murtha and Edward Kennedy if these earmarks remain.

There’s plenty more savings to be found in the defense budget through common-sense reforms , such as eliminating more wasteful weapons and reforming the military personnel system. Since the Pentagon has declared our debt the biggest national security threat facing the United States, we hope Congress becomes a willing partner in pursuing them.

For more information contact Laura Peterson