Rummy steps aside (in budgeting)

[boutons_]

October 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget

By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is allowing the Army to approach White House budget officials by itself to argue for substantial increases in resources, a significant divergence from initial plans by Mr. Rumsfeld and his inner circle to cut the Army to pay for new technology and a new way of war.

With its troops and equipment worn down by years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army appears likely to receive a significant e in its share of the Pentagon’s budget request when it goes to Congress early next year. Significantly, increases to the size of the Army made by Congress since 2001, amounting to 30,000 troops, have become a permanent fixture of the force, military and Congressional officials say.

( +30K? Iraq needs +200K or +300K )


Beyond that, the Army is discussing internally whether it should expand by tens of thousands more, as some in Congress have long advocated. This time, Mr. Rumsfeld is not standing in the way. His original vision for a transformed military called for leaner, more agile forces capitalizing on the latest technological innovations.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s current acquiescence is viewed within the Pentagon as reflecting both the reality of the Army’s needs to increase its size and repair or replace current equipment and a decision not to cross swords with the service — or with the Army’s staunchest supporters in Congress, some of whom are sharply critical of the defense secretary’s management of the war effort and have called for him to step aside.

But Mr. Rumsfeld is requiring the Army to make its own case. The defense secretary has broken Pentagon precedent by allowing the Army to make its financial case directly to the president’s Office of Management and Budget, a task normally managed by the defense secretary and his staff rather than by the individual military services. The Air Force and the Navy also asked to present their budgets directly to the budget agency and the requests were granted.

( so the hardheaded mofo STILL doesn't want the military to have what it needs, so he's letting them "own" their budget directly to OMB )


The federal government is at the point in the budget process where departments are building their budget requests, with the Office of Management and Budget overseeing the effort. Pentagon officials said the Army was seeking about $138 billion for the next fiscal year, compared with its $112 billion request last year.


Army officials told Congress that the service was already $50 billion short in equipment when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would require $17.1 billion in extra spending for 2007 just to repair and replace tanks, Humvees and other gear. Money to repair and replace equipment is expected to be $13 billion in 2008 and the next five years.

As negotiations in the Defense Department and with the Office of Management and Budget got under way to build the 2008 budget proposal, which the White House is due to submit to Congress in February, the Army took the unusual step of ignoring a deadline for submitting its central budget do ent, which the armed services use to explain their missions and resource requests.

“This is unusual, but we are in unusual times,” a senior Defense Department official said. The official, who said the missions assigned to the armed forces were larger than those envisioned in official Pentagon strategy and far outstrip what can be supported by current budgets, described the conundrum Mr. Rumsfeld and the Army face.

“Do we lower our strategy, or do we raise our resources?” said the official, who was given anonymity to discuss budget deliberations. “That’s where we’re at.”

Army officers made the case that meeting the administration’s internal preset deadline for budget proposals before the service had fully assessed its needs — and made the case for a substantial increase — would create a false debate over numbers that would have to be dramatically revised before the February deadline for the administration’s public budget submission to Congress.

Even with additional money and more troops, it is far from clear that the Army will be able in the near term to fulfill all of its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, prepare for other contingencies and keep its pledge to active-duty soldiers to give them two years at home between yearlong deployments to the war zone.


Some senior Army officials are said to be advocating a growth not just of 30,000 soldiers, but of 60,000 to 80,000, and it is likely that sustained troop levels in Iraq may require a sizable recall of the National Guard to fill out future deployments there.

Steven Kosiak, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent group that monitors defense policy, said previous budget plans looking ahead to 2011 gave the Army about 25 percent of the defense budget, roughly the same level it has received for decades.

But by pushing for a substantial increase in 2008 and for years thereafter, the Army is saying it needs a bigger share to deal with the requirements of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, possible future wars and the need to modernize its force.

Unlike the Air Force and the Navy, which have been cutting their total personnel substantially to save money that can be applied to operations and new weapons systems, the Army is being forced to increase its total numbers, drawing from money for overhauling equipment and for new weapons systems.

The Air Force and Navy also have substantial mission requirements that cannot be ignored, so eventually, the question will be whether or by how much the Pentagon budget should be allowed to grow to meet the Army’s rising needs.

Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Ins ute, a policy research group in Virginia, noted that the military budget was on the verge of exceeding a half trillion dollars a year, a level that, based on inflation-adjusted dollars, has been reached only three times before. Each previous time the budget reached that level, after the wars in Korea and Vietnam and after the defense buildup in the 1980’s, it soon went back down.

“The question is, Are we going to break that glass ceiling this time?” Mr. Thompson said. “The future is unknowable, but I would say probably not.”

Mr. Rumsfeld has come around to the Army’s position of needing more money after a series of meetings and briefings with senior officers.

“The secretary said: ‘Prove your case. Show me the metrics,’ ” a member of Mr. Rumsfeld’s policy staff said. “The Army came in and showed him their metrics and proved their case. That’s when Rumsfeld said, ‘O.K. Now go over to O.M.B. and talk to them.’ ”

Mr. Rumsfeld has not publicly addressed his reasons for allowing this tactic, although it is a no-cost decision for the defense secretary, one that allows an important yet thorny issue to be raised with the White House without any specific personal commitment from him at this early stage of the debate.

Some Pentagon officials are frustrated that the Army is arguing for increases to pay for current missions even as it resists calls to cut its own $130 billion, 10-year investment in a next-generation weapons program called Future Combat Systems. Others express concern that the Army is using its current resources inefficiently.

Rumsfeld supporters say the continued financing of Future Combat Systems illustrates how his agenda to use technology to overhaul the Army is still being pursued. Some of the additional money the Army is seeking would go toward another part of his plan, realigning the infantry divisions into more deployable brigades.

Mr. Rumsfeld has opposed proposals to increase the size of the military, citing the need to contain health benefits and other personnel costs that have been eating a larger share of the defense budget.

Congress authorized a 30,000-soldier increase in the active-duty Army after the Sept. 11 attacks that was described as a temporary measure. Army officials say they hope to reach the authorized total troop strength of 512,000 by next year.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Roc e, the Army’s top personnel officer, said that number was being treated as a “permanent floor.”

In an interview, General Roc e called that level “adequate” and said the Army “is growing the force as quickly as we can to get to that.”

Inside the Pentagon, officials both in the Army and in Mr. Rumsfeld’s inner circle go out of their way to describe a consultative relationship between the defense secretary and senior officers. The tenor, they said, is far more constructive than it was before Mr. Rumsfeld called a retired four-star officer, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, from his Rocky Mountain ranch to become the Army chief of staff and rebuild relations.

General Schoomaker, in his final year as chief, now finds himself negotiating with a strong hand as the Army carries the lion’s share of the mission in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/wa...gewanted=print

[PixelPusher]

Neoconservative ideology aside, Rummy's trim the fat/downsize/corporate cost cutting management style is very puzzling. Of all the functions of government, maintaining a military force is the most basic, and yet Rumsfeld manages the resources like an axe wielding CEO trying to increase the profit margin for the next quarter. Even the "true" small government Goldwater conservatives like Ronald Reagan understood the value of a strong, vital military. Rummy should be first one in line advocating for more funds.