It is time for Congress to repeal sequestration. Implemented in 2013 by the Budget Control Act of 2011, sequestration reduced funding to government departments with the bulk of the cuts coming from the Department of Defense.
Sequestration was never the planned approach but rather a flawed default option if all else failed. Without congressional agreement for other actions, it was the only consensus way for the Congress to stop runaway government spending. By that measure, sequestration is a success and therefore it may be difficult to rescind. However, the required DoD cuts are now biting hard into military preparedness and damaging the country’s national security. This problem needs to be fixed and fixed now.
Historically, it’s very difficult for the Congress to deal with contentious legislation during an election year. Therefore, 2016 is out and by 2017 it may be too late. The time is now but DoD needs to take the initiative, to restructure more in tune to future threats and with dramatically less bureaucracy and a significant reduction in unneeded cost.
For at least the past 25 years, multiple organizations like the Defense Science Board and Business Executives for National Security have sounded the alarm that the DoD bureaucracy is too large and too unwieldy, and that its overall costs are growing beyond the nation’s willingness to pay.
Wars are inherently inefficient and the conflicts since 2001 have pushed DoD farther in the wrong direction. The military is shrinking while an already bloated civilian bureaucracy has grown from about 700,000 in 2001 to about 740,000 today.
The Army’s recently announced planned reduction of 17,000 civilians is good news but overshadowed by a corresponding reduction of 40,000 soldiers. Unfortunately, cutting combat capability in DoD is faster and easier than reducing the civilian workforce. The DOD needs to work with Congress to reverse this process and simplify civilian reductions.
More troubling is the overwhelming burden of regulations that suffocate DoD operations and decision-making. Jacques Gansler, a former DoD official during the Clinton administration and now at the University of Maryland, reports that DoD regulations take up a crushing 186,000 pages. These regulations add cost to every DoD activity, every day. Worse, they stifle innovation, overwhelm companies doing business with the department and frustrate top military and civilian leadership. There are also important secondary effects.
Starting in the early 1990s, then-Defense Secretary William Perry rightfully suggested that defense companies should consolidate, thereby reducing overhead costs to help compensate for the “defense dividend.” It worked, but with an unintended consequence.
Commercial firms shed their defense sectors and the defense firms shed their commercial sectors. The result today is a defense establishment with almost no commercial ties and with little access to emerging commercial technology.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently visited Silicon Valley to further his initiative to make the DoD more commercial friendly. While commercial technology is not a panacea for defense, it would be a desirable outcome of a DoD restructuring. After all, nontraditional weapons are becoming more important, and our adversaries have open access to the world of commercial technology.
Since it seems fairly obvious that no highly competitive commercial firm will agree to the massive burden of defense regulations and bureaucracy, Carter’s outreach is welcome.
Some will argue that commercial participation in defense is of little benefit since the US presently has the best weapons in the world, but we think otherwise. Research and development (R&D) is the lifeblood for any technology-based organization, and our military is structured around a decisive technology edge.
Consider, however, that of the top 25 companies investing in R&D worldwide, none are in defense. In fact, if you combine the R&D expenditures of the top five US defense firms, that total would still not make it into the top 25. We therefore applaud Carter’s outreach to Silicon Valley but only as a first step to a vastly broader DoD restructuring with the objective of much greater effectiveness and efficiency.
It’s difficult for a lame duck administration with only 15 or so months in office to accomplish any new initiatives. But there is now a narrow window of opportunity for President Obama and Carter to leave with a legacy of positive change for the nation’s national security. We strongly urge that the DoD work with the Congress to quickly make deep cuts in bureaucracy and in regulations.The Congress would welcome this initiative and would thereby more seriously consider rescinding sequestration.
The outcome that we seek is a much leaner, more effective and less costly military establishment and with adequate funding for procurement, operations and maintenance. Our citizens who foot the bill and our men and women who serve our nation deserve no less.
Granger, R-Texas, is vice chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. England is former US deputy secretary of defense.
