washingtonscene Defense ‘Buzz Cut’
The Defense Business Board recommends reducing staff sizes, implementing hiring freezes, and slashing military benefits — all in the name of trimming the defense budget.
O
n July 22, the Defense Business Board (DBB) task force recommended Sec- retary of Defense Robert Gates reduce the DoD civil-
ian workforce by more than 111,000 and laid the groundwork for potential future recommendations to cut spending on military re- tirement, health care, family support, and other programs. The DBB is an indepen- dent body of business execu- tives and defense experts that offers recommenda- tions for implementing best business practices on mat- ters of interest to DoD. The DBB also recom-
mended drastic reductions in combatant command staff- ing and hiring freezes and elimination of organizational duplication. These will be followed by ad- ditional cost-cutting proposals this month. For the past year, the DBB has predict- ed major problems for the defense budget as the nation wrestles with deficit-reduc- tion efforts, economic recovery, escalating health care and personnel costs, and the potential exit from two wars. Board members believe avoiding a loom-
ing fiscal crisis will require cutting the defense budget beyond Gates’ recently an- nounced target of a $100 billion reduction in overhead spending.
The board’s initial observations brief-
For the past year, the Defense Business Board has predicted major prob- lems for the defense budget.
ing devoted an entire section to costs for military compensation, retirement, health care, veterans’ affairs, concurrent receipt, commissaries, dependent education, and military family housing and particularly highlighted costs associated with TRICARE For Life. A page titled “The ‘Military
Retirement’ sacred cow is in- creasingly unaffordable” cites increases in the number of military retirees since 1980 (as if this weren’t the direct result of decisions by every adminis- tration and Congress since the 1950s to induce a large, stand- ing career force) and criticizes the 20-year retirement system (as if the military could have sustained the force over the past 10 years of repeated war- time deployments without it).
Another section cites personnel cost
growth since 1998 — conveniently over- looking that 1998 was the nadir of two decades of erosion of military pay, retire- ment, health care, and other benefits and the resulting retention problems of that era were what sparked Congress to em- bark on an extended program to fix them. Unfortunately, the DBB report is only one of the early shots in what likely will be years of budget battles to reconcile mili- tary and other needs with truly daunting deficit projections.
O C TO B E R 2 0 1 0 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R 3 1
Budget Battle Ahead
■ How might efforts to control the growing national debt affect TRI- CARE and other military and veterans’ programs? See “Dealing With the Deficit,” page 50, to learn more.
L E G I S LAT IVE NEWS THAT AF F ECTS YOU
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