The Danger Of Bad Bill-Writing

Ryan Grim has an amusing report about the unintended consequences in the conservative attempt to embarrass ACORN:

Going after ACORN may be like shooting fish in a barrel lately -- but jumpy lawmakers used a bazooka to do it last week and may have blown up some of their longtime allies in the process.

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Alan Grayson is all over this, with a list of defense contractor misconduct at the ready.

So conservatives have two choices - let the ACORN bill wither on the grounds that it's an unconstitutional bill of attainder, or push it forward and open it up to about a decade's worth of Alan Grayson filing motions to deny funds to Northrop Grumman or Blackwater or whoever. The establishment would probably just prefer this gets swallowed up in conference, but from a political standpoint that would be the worst thing to do because it lets Republicans off the hook. If they really want to stop tax dollars from going to fraudulent companies, then game on.

A Small Victory

The F-22 fighter is built in 44 states. The military contractors who build it and provide supplies spend many millions in lobby costs. Armed Services Committee appropriators in particular get slathered in special interest money and reward their contributors with as many contracts as possible. The overall trajectory of military spending since World War II is that the military part of the budget is magic and we can spend whatever we want on it. As a result, we spend more on the weapons and tools of war than every other country on Earth, combined.

So it's not every day that a major weapons program gets phased out through the appropriations process. It happened today, as 58 Senators voted to cancel additional spending on the F-22 fighter, a plane which the Pentagon doesn't want, which the Air Force doesn't want, which hasn't flown a single mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which has been found in tests to be vulnerable to rain.

It was a parochial vote that had more to do with whether a Senator's state builds major portions of the F-22 than anything else. And it will not signal any kind of near-term sea change in the military budget, which will increase this year. A lot of the F-22 money will just re-route into other fighters like the F-35 and unmanned aerial drones. But there's a symbolic significance here. The President and the Secretary of Defense took on the military-industrial complex by threatening to veto the entire defense bill if this funding stayed intact, and in this case they won. If we're ever going to break their stranglehold on the process, we have to win this kind of vote. Over time, we may even have a President that says "hey, it's kind of insane to spend more on the military than every other country combined" - don't laugh, it could happen - and by showing the ability to cancel weapons projects like this, it will be easier for that future President to maneuver. And I particularly like some of the language Obama used in his comments about this, saying that our budget is a zero-sum game and our "citizens lose" if more money goes to unnecessary weapons systems. With all the talk from the fiscal scolds, there is an opportunity to channel that toward a military budget full of bloat and waste.

It's a good first step, nothing more. But showing we can get by without weapons systems designed for the Cold War is important.

...some additional good news here. Though he voted against stripping the funding, Robert Byrd took a vote on the bill. We've been hearing with respect to health care that Democrats really only have 58 Senators, due to two ill members. Byrd is now back and voting. And you cannot tell me that wild horses could keep Ted Kennedy from a health care vote. The Democrats will have 60 votes. What they do with them is their choice.

Gates on the F-22

Remember, this is Robert Gates, who served under a Republican President both at the CIA and the Defense Department, arguing in the most explicit language I've seen from a public official against the dictates of the military-industrial complex:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an impassioned case Thursday for terminating the F-22 program after production of 187 planes, as the Obama administration sought to blunt a bipartisan push to add money to the defense budget for the fighter jet.

"If we can't bring ourselves to make this tough but straightforward decision -- reflecting the judgment of two very different presidents, two different secretaries of defense, two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current Air Force secretary and chief of staff -- where do we draw the line?" he said in a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. "If we can't get this right, what on earth can we get right?" [...]

The normally staid Gates became especially animated Thursday describing his frustration with lawmakers' efforts to keep building F-22s. "The more they buy of stuff we don't need, the less we have available for the stuff we do need," he told reporters, his voice rising. "It is just as simple as that. It ain't a complicated problem."

Even if Congress acquiesces on the F-22, Gates warned, the Pentagon has to do a better job of setting realistic goals for its weapons programs.

"We must break the old habit of adding layer upon layer of cost, complexity and delay to systems that are so expensive and so elaborate that only a small number can be built and are usable in only a narrow range of low-probability scenarios," he said.

Jack Murtha seems to think there won't be a veto. I actually hope that the White House doesn't compromise on this. If they do, there will be no political will to go up against the MIC again, at least for a while. However, now that the defense bill has become a legislative vehicle for the bill expanding hate crimes legislation to sexual orientation, which passed the Senate with 63 votes yesterday, it does need to go through. But the President has the upper hand here - the defense bill is must-pass, and Congress doesn't exactly inspire fear in anyone.

Hopefully the Senate can vote this out of the bill next week. It'll be close.

F-22 Intrigue

The debate in the Senate over additional funding for the F-22 (even if this funding is cut, we'll have 187 of the fighters available) took a turn last night.

Senator Levin for some reason withdraws his amendment to strike funding for the F-22 fighter that the President wants discontinued and over which he threatens a veto of the bill. And hate crimes legislation finally finds a legislative vehicle to be attached to. Only it's... the bill the President threatens to veto if the F-22 money isn't struck. That ain't gonna go over well, if anyone's looking. I don't know if there's any other effort underway besides Levin's to strike that F-22 funding. We'll see. Meanwhile, Senator Reid has done what needs doing to clear the decks for a vote on the hate crimes amendment. He's filled the amendment tree and filed for cloture [...]

I'd hate to see them stay until one in the morning on Friday to get this done, only to attach it to a doomed bill. But maybe it's not so doomed if this is attached. Maybe that's the thinking. To trade the president the hate crimes salve he promised the LGBT community after the DOMA brief fiasco in exchange for his letting the F-22 authorization escape the veto. Slick!

The White House appears serious enough about removing the additional F-22 funding that I suspect the amendment will return in some form, if not in conference committee. Peter Orszag also objects to $438.9 million in funding for a new engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, which has a perfectly good engine already. And the F-22 funding is being assailed in print media, both in this NYT op-ed:

The plane, the most expensive jet fighter ever built, was designed for cold war aerial combat. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly argued that the Pentagon needs to phase out such high-cost, outdated programs so it can buy the kinds of weapons that American troops desperately need to complete their mission in Iraq and defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The F-22 has not been used in either war. Buying more would only make it harder for the Air Force to shift money into aircraft like unmanned intelligence drones and the more adaptable, cheaper-to-fly F-35 fighter, which is set to begin production in 2012 [...]

Providing for America’s real defense needs is expensive enough without making the military budget double as a make-work jobs program. Capping the F-22 program at 187, as the Pentagon wants, would keep production lines intact for years to come, well beyond the immediate need for stimulus-related job creation.

Not to mention this reported piece in WaPo (h/t Hilzoy why the hell are you leaving blogging!!!), detailing all the failures of the F-22 as a vehicle:

"The United States' top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show. (...)

"It is a disgrace that you can fly a plane [an average of] only 1.7 hours before it gets a critical failure" that jeopardizes success of the aircraft's mission, said a Defense Department critic of the plane who is not authorized to speak on the record. Other skeptics inside the Pentagon note that the planes, designed 30 years ago to combat a Cold War adversary, have cost an average of $350 million apiece and say they are not a priority in the age of small wars and terrorist threats.

The plane is literally "vulnerable to rain." And we spend $1.7 billion a piece for them.

So I think the F-22 funding will come out, by hook or by crook. But here's the really interesting part of the defense bill:

The Obama administration has objected to a provision in the 2010 defense funding bill currently before the Senate that would bar the military's use of contractors to interrogate detainees.

The provision, strongly backed by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), describes interrogations as an "inherently governmental function" that "cannot be transferred to contractor personnel." It would give the Defense Department one year from the bill's enactment to ensure that the military had the resources to comply with it.

A White House policy statement yesterday signaled "many areas of agreement" with the bill that emerged from Levin's committee late last month but said the administration has "serious concerns" about some provisions. The statement repeated Obama's threat to veto the $680 billion bill unless $1.75 billion to fund an additional seven F-22 fighter aircraft is removed.

The more that we privatize interrogation, the more likelihood that those less accountable contractors sully America through torture. We can absolutely meet the needs of intelligence gathering without using CACI or other contractors, and it's sad to see the Obama Administration fight this provision.

Basically, there's a whole lot tied up in this bill at the moment. I could see nothing passing and defense funded under last year's agreement. Which would be a net loss and a missed opportunity at reform, not to mention a loss for the hate crimes bill.

The Battle Over The F-22

One area where President Obama deserves some praise is his stand on the F-22, at odds with parochial interests in Congress and even splitting some senior Democrats:

Democratic leaders support an amendment that would strip the $1.75 billion for seven additional jets from the 2010 defense authorization bill, which is being debated on the Senate floor this week.

But several senior Democrats are from states that will see gains from building more F-22s.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who represents the state where Pratt & Whitney builds the F-22 engine, told The Hill he was working with his Democratic colleagues to convince them to support the purchase of more jets despite the president’s opposition. Dodd also faces a tough reelection campaign next year.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, will be a key vote to watch. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, which supports removing the F-22 funds, lists Schumer as poised to vote against stripping the money.

Schumer declined to say how he was voting, telling The Hill he is still studying the issue, and advised: “Watch the vote.”

Sen. Levin withdrew the amendment temporarily today so the Senate could take up the hate crimes bill. Sounds to me like Levin feared he didn't have the votes.

Matt Duss lays out what this is really about.

So just to be clear, this argument over the F-22, at least as it’s occurring in Congress, not really a debate over defending the country — it’s a test of whether the requirements of electoral politics can outweigh the requirements of American national security as defined by the Department of Defense. This isn’t to suggest that Congress has no role in determining American defense requirements — of course it does, but let’s not pretend that seven extra planes is the difference between air dominance and ceding the skies.

Meanwhile, Mike Goldfarb observes that “one thing that’s been consistent throughout this process has been quiet support for F-22, in contrast to the vocal opposition from Obama, Gates, and McCain. Most people thought that F-22 was DOA as soon as Gates released the administration’s defense budget. But it turns out that support for the program in Congress is pretty broad.”

I don’t know if I’d call Lockheed and Boeing spending $6.5 million and $2.4 million, respectively, on lobbying in the first three months of 2009 “quiet support.” But yes, it is rather impressive what kind of support can be gotten for an item that the military doesn’t want by spreading its production out into 48 different states, donating vast sums of money to various political action committees, and sending armies of lobbyists onto the Hill. It’s almost as if politicians were interested in getting re-elected or something.

We're moving into a phase of whether we can take even this minor step in defying the military-industrial complex - remember, the overall military budget will increase this year - or whether we're resigned to defense contractors eating up massive government contracts forever, permanently hamstringing our budget. That's what's at stake in this amendment.

Challenging The Status Quo

I'm going to try and get off Sanford Watch for just a moment, mainly because I'm reading the cringeworthy emails with most of my hand in front of my face. Because, despite the fact that it will get almost no media coverage, this is a pretty important statement from the Administration.

Preparing for a possible showdown with Congress, the White House on Wednesday threatened to veto legislation authorizing a $680 billion military budget if it contains money for jet fighters the Pentagon doesn’t want.

In a statement, the White House Office of Management and Budget said the $369 million that a House committee added to the bill as a downpayment for 12 additional F-22 fighters runs counter to the "collective judgment" of the military’s top leaders.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to end production of the radar-evading F-22 after 187 aircraft have been built. Last week, in a preview of the White House’s veto threat, Gates called the funding boost a "big problem." [...]

Another provision in the House bill the White House strongly objects to adds $603 million for a back-up engine intended for another fighter jet in development called the F-35. The committee says the alternative engine is needed in the event the primary propulsion system has problems that might ground the aircraft.

But the White House says the extra engine isn’t needed and will slow the fielding of the F-35, a single-engine aircraft to be used by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

The backstory is that the Defense Department and the White House signed off on these cuts to the military budget, so did the relevant leadership in the armed services, and so did THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE PRODUCTS. At the time I didn't consider it that big a deal, because a lot of this money gets shuttled around to other equipment, and the overall military budget remains unsustainably high, at a time when we're scrounging for funding to give people quality health care. But some parochial politicians, and considering that the F-22 gets supplies from 43 states they're practically ALL parochial when it comes to the war machines, stuck the funding back in, for weapons and equipment that the defense establishment doesn't want.

For the President to offer a veto threat, which to my recollection is the first veto threat of his Presidency, over ending the military-industrial complex gravy train is pretty significant. If we don't take the first step and restore the ability to end weapons systems, then the military budget will just grow and grow. Most politicians already consider it magic and unrelated to any other spending, even while they scold about "runaway budget deficits" in the same breath. The jobs argument attempted here is bogus, "weaponized Keynesianism", as Barney Frank called it. Building bridges and roads and a smart energy grid were the kinds of job-creating engines that all the fiscal scolds considered too expensive during the stimulus fight, but suddenly when defense is on the menu, they're all "jobs, baby, jobs." Those Blue Dogs who scream about budgets can now tell everyone why we can afford a plane that the Air Force doesn't need and the manufacturer doesn't even want to make.

The President's taking a small risk here. I can already hear the resurrection of Zell Miller demagoguing in 2012 about "what are we gonna use, spitballs?" But this represents the setting of a marker, one of the first I can remember, that our military budget is not sustainable, and as a first step we have to be able to wind down Cold War-era weapons systems that are completely inapplicable to the present day. Not many people have allowed themselves to publicly make this argument. So it deserves some credit.

The relevant parts of the statement from the White House OMB below.

The Administration supports House passage of H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. The Administration appreciates the House Armed Services Committee's continued strong support of our national defense, including its support for the Department's topline budget requests for both the base budget and for overseas contingency operations.

The Administration appreciates, among other things, the leadership of the Committee in supporting many of the President's initiatives to terminate or reduce programs that have troubled histories, or that failed to demonstrate adequate performance when compared to other programs and activities needed to carry out U.S. national security objectives. In addition, the Administration welcomes the Committee's support for the Secretary of Defense's plan to increase the size of the civilian acquisition workforce and reduce the Department's reliance on contractors for critical acquisition functions. Also, the Administration appreciates that the Committee included authorities that are important to field commanders, such as the Commanders' Emergency Response Program and the authority to reimburse coalition partners.

While there are many areas of agreement with the Committee, the Administration nonetheless has serious concerns with a number of provisions that could constrain the ability of the Armed Forces to carry out their missions, that depart from Secretary Gates' decisions reflected in the President's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget which carefully balanced fiscal constraints, program performance, strategic needs and capabilities, or that raise other issues. The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to address these concerns, some of which are outlined below, and to refine this legislation to align it more closely with national defense priorities.

F-22 Advance Procurement: The Administration strongly objects to the provisions in the bill authorizing $369 million in advanced procurement funds for F-22s in FY 2011. The collective judgment of the Service Chiefs and Secretaries of the military departments suggests that a final program of record of 187 F-22s is sufficient to meet operational requirements. If the final bill presented to the President contains this provision, the President's senior advisors would recommend a veto.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program: The Administration strongly objects to the addition of $603 million for development and procurement of the alternative engine program, and the requirement for the Department to fund the alternative engine program in future budget requests to the President. These changes will delay the fielding of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) capability and capacity, adversely impacting the Department's overall strike fighter inventory. In addition, the Administration objects to provisions of the bill that mandate an alternative engine program for the JSF. The current engine is performing well with more than 11,000 test hours. Expenditures on a second engine are unnecessary and impede the progress of the overall JSF program. Alleged risks of a fleet-wide grounding due to a single engine are exaggerated. The Air Force currently has several fleets that operate on a single-engine source. The Administration also objects to the limit on the obligation of overall JSF development funding to 75% of the amount authorized until Department of Defense (DOD) has obligated all funds provided in FY 2010 for the alternative engine program. If the final bill presented to the President would seriously disrupt the F-35 program, the President's senior advisors would recommend a veto.

...Lorelei Kelly has more.

Delayed Election Means Delayed Withdrawal

Iraq postponed their national elections yet again, pushing them back to 2010. Iraq can postpone elections if they want - I wish California would learn from them - but the President's Iraq withdrawal policy doesn't kick in until after national elections, and it's supposed to be accomplished by the end of August 2010. So now, we'd have to remove all combat troops from the country in a matter of seven months, which actually kind of is a precipitous withdrawal. And the Administration would almost certainly see this as a reason to delay the full withdrawal of US combat forces.

I don't believe this threatens the overall withdrawal by the end of 2011. But extending the agreed-upon deadlines would cause anger at home, and probably abroad in Iraq, even if it's seen as a reaction to the delayed election. The bleeding of these deadlines could easily lead to mission creep. And I agree with Alan Grayson, and some point you have to say that enough is enough, and end the policy of endless war.

The reason why I said what I said is because the fundamental goal of our endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan is supposed to be to protect us. That’s why we call the Defense Department the Defense Department, because it’s supposed to defend America. And whatever the perceived threat may be, whether it’s al-Qaeda or the Taliban or otherwise, only by the most incredibly convoluted Bushian logic could you possibly get to the point where you conclude that as a result of that threat we should spend $100 billion a year and send over 100,000 of our young men and women abroad, 8,000 miles away, and that that is an effective way to accomplish that goal. It doesn’t make any sense.

Life does not consist of a Risk board game, where you try to occupy every space on the planet. There’s no other country that does this, there’s no other country that seeks to occupy foreign countries 8,000 miles from their own border, and believe that that somehow accomplishes anything useful. It doesn’t. If in fact it’s important to our national security to keep al-Qaeda or the Taliban under control, there are far more effective ways of accomplishing that goal, if that is in fact the goal, than to expend this kind of money and this kind of blood.

This is something that Democrats said when they were in the opposition repeatedly, and that truth hasn’t changed at all just because we elected a president. You can always find some kind of excuse to do what you want to do anyway, but I have to wonder why a new Democratic president wants to do something like this. This is a president who has recognized the immorality of torture, and I’m waiting for him to recognize the immorality of war and foreign occupation.

You'll forgive me for wondering whether the need to occupy foreign countries springs from a desire to keep America safe, or a desire to pay off giant corporations.

Robert Gates Is Not A Gangster

Somehow, the Defense Secretary got the Air Force to acquiesce to his demands to ramp down production of the F-22.

Top Air Force officials said Monday that they supported the Obama administration’s decision to buy only four more of the advanced F-22 fighter jets, making it less likely that Congress will insist on extending its production.

The Air Force had previously said it needed 60 more of the planes, a position that had built expectations for a fierce battle in Congress over the program’s future.

Legislators from Georgia, Connecticut and other states with major suppliers are still likely to push for more planes. But it will be much harder for them to succeed if the Air Force is not quietly supporting their efforts, military analysts said.

Several industry officials and former Air Force officers said they would not be surprised to see Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor on the plane, pull back from a lobbying campaign emphasizing how many jobs would be lost if production was halted.

Michael Donley and Norton Schwartz, the secretary and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, even penned an op-ed in the WaPo arguing to move forward from the F-22.

I confess that I assumed this fight would be much more protracted. And it may still be - I wouldn't put it past defense-state lawmakers to insist on building what even the Air Force doesn't want. But let's again read between the lines here. The next paragraph after the ones I cited in the Times article are:

Under the administration’s plan, the Pentagon would speed up the testing of another Lockheed Martin fighter, the F-35, which it plans to buy in much greater quantities. Industry officials said the company might not want to risk angering the new administration as it already had many other lucrative defense contracts.

In other words, we're talking about moving from one Lockheed assembly line to another. Don't take my word for it, look at Donley and Schwartz' op-ed:

Much rides on the F-35's success, and it is critical to keep the Joint Strike Fighter on schedule and on cost. This is the time to make the transition from F-22 to F-35 production. Within the next few years, we will begin work on the sixth-generation capabilities necessary for future air dominance.

In other words, let's just switch assembly lines and keep the contractor money flowing.

Gates' budget isn't necessarily bad, and I was heartened by President Obama's statement in his economic speech today that it was a good start but "we can do more." But the outpourings of praise just seem to me misplaced. Ultimately, Gates is protecting the bloated military budget.

Just Changing The Facade Of The Complex

Brian Beutler has the scoop that the media is reporting inaccurately. I know, I'm as blown away as you.

In other words, by retooling the Pentagon, Obama and Gates plan to move a lot of money around, but they also plan to increase the overall defense budget. In the final year of the Bush administration (and excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) the defense budget was $513 billion. In FY 2010, if Gates and Obama get their way, it will be $534 billion--$534 billion that will be spent much differently than last year's outlays were.

But you'd never know that from the news coverage.

Here's how Politico reports it:

"Now that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rolled out major cuts to some of the Pentagon's largest weapons systems, the decision to accept or reject those changes falls on Congress....

With all the advance speculation about Gates' cuts, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, has already put forward a few recommendations of his own...."

Republican members of Congress are characterizing the budget changes as cuts, too.

Allow me to interrupt the great love-fest between liberal foreign policy bloggers and Bob Gates by stating the obvious - isn't the fact that the Pentagon budget is increasing, um, THE PROBLEM? And considering that the media-Congressional complex will characterize any effort to put an end to outdated Cold War-era weapons systems as a "defense cut", in the most irresponsible way possible, why aren't we limiting expenditures on a military budget that costs far more than any country on Earth, depriving us of the flexibility to pursue meaningful social investment? I think Ezra Klein has this right.

One problem with the conversation over cutting the budget is that the 20 percent of federal dollars that go towards the defense sector are considered sacrosanct. This is not a very wise move. Defense spending is second only to entitlement spending in total cost. And while it's hard to make the case that seniors need less in the way of guaranteed pensions and that the poor need less in the way of health care coverage, it's certainly arguable that America could get by with less in the way of defense spending. The following graph is ugly, but telling:



But though we know that Robert Gates' proposed military cuts will increase the value we get for our military dollars, we don't know if they will actually cut spending. Gates has announced his intention to end an array of wasteful programs, but we don't know if he means to replace them with new programs. We should have more clarity in a few days, when the Pentagon sends its budget up to the Hill. If Gates is leveraging his credibility to actually make cuts to the military's bloated budget, however, he'd deserve every encomium he's been given.

Right now, I'm not sure he deserves much for seemingly transferring that bloated budget from one set of contractors to another. For instance, the makers of the F-22 may not be happy today, but the makers of Predator drones, who will see a 127 percent increase in their spending, are giddy. While missile defense gets a cut that is intolerable to the likes of Joe Lieberman, we're still putting $800 million in taxpayer money into a system that doesn't actually work.

Let me say that there is much to like in the proposal - in particular the hiring of civil servants and firing of contractors who perform procurement - and maybe down the road, with the big lift of shiny weaponry out of the way, we can get around to balancing the unsustainably large and inefficient size of our military. But really, let's not go overboard with the "Obama and Gates go to China" talk, when together they increased the Pentagon budget.

Gates v. The Military Industrial Complex... or Just Building a New One?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a budget recommendation that is shocking in its sweeping change, extremely unusual for the Pentagon's go-along, get-along approach to military contracting over the past 50 years or so. Robert Farley summarizes.

1. No more F-22s.
2. Replacement Air Force bomber delayed indefinitely.
3. Ballistic missile defense funding leans toward the Navy.
4. Aircraft carrier acquisition slowed, with the fleet eventually dropping to 10 carriers.
5. Next generation cruiser (CGX) delayed indefinitely.
6. VH-71 Presidential helicopter dead.
7. No more than three DDG-1000, and maybe only one.
8. Future Combat Systems funding slashed.

Farley says "This is why Bob Gates is still secretary of defense; Obama didn't believe that such cuts would be possible under a Democratic secretary." Perhaps so. And I agree with a lot of it; the F-22 is obselete in the context of current wars, for example. Cold War-era weapons systems have no place in the modern military. These cuts aren't THAT deep - missile defense still gets about $1 billion, for example - but they are significant.

But let's consider these "cuts" fully - they would not represent an overall scaling down of the Pentagon budget, but a lateral move into a forward-looking belief that the wars of the future will be counter-insurgencies and not wars of territory. I agree with Noah Schachtman that this makes a certain amount of sense, as major weapons programs are useless in such combat missions, while warm bodies are at a premium. I see this as an effort to SAVE the military budget, not slash it. While it makes sense to focus on funding the services needed for the wars we actually fight, in the final analysis the total budget still swamps the rest of the world many times over, troops are still based in 130 countries, and the Pentagon still dwarfs the rest of the budget on discretionary spending. It seems to me like this is trading one set of contractors for another, in a fashion. That's why those who represent the counter-insurgency faction of the military are thrilled.

There may be savings in the acquisitions and the contracting process in this request - I certainly hope so. And Gates' comment that "this is a reform budget" gives cause for optimism. In addition, with lots of this budget devoted to health care and veteran's services, perhaps engaging in less wars will drop costs substantially, in ways that could not be done while building giant weapons systems. But I'm not seeing much of a challenge to the idea that military budget must be outsized relative to the overall budget forever. And a perusal of the Congressional reaction to this recommendation is pretty telling:

"Secretary Gates has set out major changes to the defense budget based on changed assumptions about the wars our military must be prepared to fight. This is a good faith effort, and I appreciate the hard work and thoughtful consideration Secretary Gates and his staff put into these proposals.

"However, the buck stops with Congress, which has the critical Constitutional responsibility to decide whether to support these proposals. In the weeks ahead, my colleagues and I will carefully consider these proposals and look forward to working with Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen as we prepare the Fiscal Year 2010 defense authorization act."

In other words, nice budget, now move over while I mark it up.

Significantly, John McCain seems to be on the side of reform. Jim Webb said this: "The secretary's announcement today is highly unorthodox ... Secretary Gates has proposed funding increases, reductions, deferrals, and cancellations in numerous defense programs. In the absence of a more detailed description of the strategic underpinnings justifying his funding priorities--including an assessment of the level of risk posed to U.S. national security interests--it is difficult to evaluate them in isolation."

The weapons contractor industry will be quick to strike against this budget as well, and almost for that reason alone, I see value in Gates' product. But it's hard to see this as much more than a juggling of numbers in what remains too high a budget for war.

...Predictable blather from James Inhofe:

"I cannot believe what I heard today," Inhofe said in a statement. "President Obama is disarming America. Never before has a president so ravaged the military at a time of war."

Yes, "ravaged" them by eliminating weapons systems that aren't being used in this war. Sadly, such demagoguery is likely to work.

The Coming Military-Industrial Complex Battle

A Senate panel that I assume doesn't include Evan Bayh or Ben Nelson passed unanimously a bill to rein in the contracting process at the Pentagon. There's a lot to like about this bill, which is co-sponsored by John McCain.

The bill would require the Pentagon to do more extensive engineering studies before embarking on new weapons programs and to rebuild its oversight staff, which was sharply reduced after the end of the cold war.

It would create a position for a project-testing director at the Pentagon and make it easier to end programs that exceed their original budget estimates by 25 percent.

Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan who is chairman of the committee, said before the vote on Thursday that the changes were meant to be “tough medicine.”

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been scrutinizing the most troubled programs and is expected to propose cuts in several major programs soon.

The Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, reported this week that nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon’s 96 largest weapons programs were over budget last year, for a combined total of $296 billion above the original estimates.

Obviously, it's easy to change the PROCESS for procurement - a fair bit of the bill concerns realistic cost estimates (read: higher ones). The proof of whether Congress can really push back against out-of-control contracting comes when Bob Gates releases his Pentagon budget.

Reporting from Washington -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will announce his plans for a sweeping overhaul of the defense budget on Monday, Pentagon officials said today.

Gates will announce his decisions first in telephone calls to congressional leaders Monday morning and then in an afternoon news conference.

Gates has been working for weeks on an overhaul of the defense budget and has been contemplating tough decisions on whether to cancel the Air Force's F-22 fighter plane, Navy shipbuilding programs, the Army's Future Combat System and a host of other weapons programs.

In an unusual move for the Pentagon, Gates will announce his budget recommendations before shipping the formal recommendation to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

"It ... reflects the magnitude of the decision," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "These aren't changes on the margins. It is a fundamental shift in direction."

Already Holy Joe and his pals in the GOP are pushing back against this. They cannot conceive of an armed forces without bloated budgets the size of the rest of the world combined. It doesn't matter that America can't afford it, because military spending is magic.

This will be an epic fight.

The Cold War Ended 20 Years Ago

Overshadowed by the continuing (and perfectly appropriate) furor over AIG bonuses, the Obama Administration appears to be readying the first assault on the military-industrial complex since Dwight Eisenhower coined the phrase.

Now, as the only Bush Cabinet member to remain under President Obama, Gates is preparing the most far-reaching changes in the Pentagon's weapons portfolio since the end of the Cold War, according to aides.

Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the offi cials said.

More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said.

As a former CIA director with strong Republican credentials, Gates is prepared to use his credibility to help Obama overcome the expected outcry from conservatives. And after a lifetime in the national security arena, working in eight administrations, the 65-year-old Gates is also ready to counter the defense companies and throngs of retired generals and other lobbyists who are gearing up to protect their pet projects.

The article claims that other Defense Secretaries have tried and failed to end the defense industry welfare schemes. I think this Defense Secretary is better positioned. First of all, his service for both George Bush and Barack Obama gives this a bipartisan sheen. And Obama has folded the issue of procurement into his overall budget strategy. Finally, this is likely to happen because Gates doesn't come at it with the attitude of a budget-cutter. Steve Hynd is right to note that this will not signal the drawing down of the military budget, at least not in the short term.

This isn't about reducing the overall military budget - it's about repurposing it. While shiny toys are to get the axe (presuming Gates and the Obama administration can overcome recalcitrance from lawmakers and officers as well as intense industry-funded lobbying) there's still going to be a lot of stuff to spend lots of money on.

The U.S. Army and Marines are to collectively add about 92,000 personnel, an increase of about 12% in manpower but since most will be slated for active duty combat brigades it is likely to mean more like a 20% ($30 billion) increase in annual running costs and an initial stand-up bill of about $80 billion. Standing up these new troops will be far better stimulus spending than any other kind of defense spending but don't expect to get clear answers about costs from the Pentagon or White House. Those figures are back-of-the-envelope estimates based on what is known of current costs but no military department has ever done a full assessment of the cost of sustaining its operations so they have to be estimates.

Then there's all the other military spending Obama and Gates intend - the transformation of the military into a COIN force as promised on WhiteHouse.Gov: "civil affairs, information operations, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence and other needed counterinsurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a more robust capacity to train, equip, and advise foreign security forces." None of that is cheap, especially when you're talking about tens of thousands of people to be trained. Add in "greater investment in advanced technology ranging from the revolutionary, like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and electronic warfare capabilities", increasing the number of Maritime Pre-Positioning Force Squadrons and investing in more small ships to see even more savings being swallowed up by the military machine instead of going to solve other problems. Add in the expenses for Iraq until withdrawal and the expected one to two decades in Afghanistan that no COINdinista really wants to talk about, neither of which will be funded by supplementals anymore, and the bill could easily swallow any savings from cutting F-22 and other big-ticket programs.

For Gates, this is not about reducing the military budget, but about transforming it. I agree that the military should be constructed to meet modern challenges, and costly weapons systems do little in that respect. However, he will not be leading the Pentagon forever. And the labor-intensive weapons systems will be much harder to phase out than a reduction in force capacity or winding down wars. At the end of the day, the United States will still spend more on its military than any other nation combined, including too much on functions that could be performed by the State Department. The table would be set, then, for medium- and long-term reductions in military budgets. I'm happy to have Gates doing the heaviest lifting in the near term. Ultimately, defense cuts are intimately tied to ending the culture of interventionism in this country, and stopping the constant production of annihilation systems is a necessary precursor.

Andrew Exum has more.

Bipartisan Military Spenders

Here's yet more examples why Obama's fight to end wasteful military spending and corrupt federal contracts is going to be so difficult, because in a very real sense it means taking on the heart of the Washington establishment itself.

When President Obama promised Wednesday to attack defense spending that he considers wasteful and inefficient, he opened a fight with key lawmakers from his own party.

It was Democrats who stuffed an estimated $524 million in defense earmarks that the Pentagon did not request into the 2008 appropriations bill, about $220 million more than Republicans did, according to an independent estimate. Of the 44 senators who implored Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in January to build more F-22 Raptors -- a fighter conceived during the Cold War that senior Pentagon officials say is not suited to probable 21st-century conflicts -- most were Democrats.

And last July, when the Navy's top brass decided to end production of their newest class of destroyers -- in response to 15 classified intelligence reports highlighting their vulnerability to a range of foreign missiles -- seven Democratic senators quickly joined four Republicans to demand a reversal. They threatened to cut all funding for surface combat ships in 2009.

Within a month, Gates and the Navy reversed course and endorsed production of a third DDG-1000 destroyer, at a cost of $2.7 billion.

I think the whole earmark "problem" is completely overblown, distorting because many of the earmarks are worthwhile projects, and overall they represent a tiny fraction of the overall budget. But it's undeniable that Democrats and Republicans are heavily invested in the military-industrial complex, just as much as defense contractors are invested in them. That's just a fact.

Democrats may talk about it differently, not as much about the need for a "strong national defense" but about the jobs these projects bring to their districts or their states. Either way, it's a symbol of the same corruption. Weapons producers give lots of money to politicians, politicians make sure they get lots of business from the government. And because large weapons systems like the F-22 Raptor are spread out among 44 states, there is enough support to basically maintain the status quo. There's also a sunk cost problem, when billions have already been spent on a lot of these useless programs. Some of them aren't even requested by the Defense Department.

Still, there is hope. When Raymond Odierno cancels contracts on bases in Iraq, you get the sense that the military is coming around to the need to keep down costs. Now we have to get Congress to think the same way.

The Contractors Strike Back

Looks like the military industry-welfare lobby isn't going to take kindly to Barack Obama's call to end waste in government contracting and procurement. They're preparing for battle like you'd expect of people who build weapons systems for a living.

Defense bloat has stunned auditors. A report last year from the Government Accountability Office found that 95 ongoing major defense programs exceeded their budgets, providing an accumulated excess cost of $295 billion to taxpayers. The programs include big-ticket items beloved by the military services, including the Army’s Future Combat System, the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship and the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter, which are built by defense-industry giants like Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., and Raytheon Company, all of which have aggressive lobbying arms and excellent relationships with defense barons on Capitol Hill. According to the government’s Federal Procurement Database, which tracks federal contracts, the Defense Department reported over $394 billion worth of business with private contractors in fiscal 2008 alone.

Defense contractors and their allies in government will not let that money go without a confrontation, say defense reformers [...] Their “ground game,” the official said, will be run from the services’ legislative outreach and public-affairs offices, feeding talking points and strategy information to sympathetic members of Congress — something that “got the services in trouble in 2002″ with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when the Army resisted his ultimately-successful plan to scrap an archaic artillery system called Crusader. An “air game” will feature “a lot of ominous whispers on background to the press and conservative think tanks and commentators about endangering the American people and costing lives in some future fight.”

Gates, whom Obama tasked with working closely with OMB, has told confidantes that he views a sustainable long-term rebalancing of defense priorities as one of his most important tasks now that Obama has given him the chance to continue on as Pentagon chief. His service under the Bush administration was more about supporting the immediate needs of the Iraq war after Bush fired Rumsfeld in November 2006. “The services are accustomed to reviews that start out with a lot of talk about setting priorities and making tough choices but in reality usually end with leaving everything more or less intact,” the Pentagon official said. “This time they have a secretary who really means it.”

As Matthew Yglesias notes, what we're talking about here is the armed services - part of the federal government - using their own taxpayer-funded public affairs shops to lobby for more wasted contracting and against reform. The fact that the door between the Pentagon and the defense industry is constantly revolving means that a government official who steers contracts to the right company is simply fattening their own resume for the inevitable post-public service career. This is why it's called a military-industrial complex, after all.

And under the Bush regime, this kind of coziness between government officials and their cronies was simply rampant. In a little-discussed tidbit in yesterday's press briefing, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack mentions a $400,000 consulting contact with the USDA that he recently cancelled because career staffers considered it "inappropriate." There's a follow-up, and the information had to practically be dragged out of Vilsack, but the picture he eventually paints is one of a mob boss creating make-work jobs for his henchmen (Major Garrett is the questioner, trying to make some case for the necessity of useless contracts to avoid lawsuits, or something):

Q Secretary Vilsack, you talked about a $400,000 consulting contract deemed inappropriate. What was inappropriate about it? And just generally, to both of you, one of the problems in federal contracting is when you cancel a contract, sometimes a contract will sue the government because they disagree with the cancellation. How do you end up saving the taxpayers money if you get involved in protracted litigation if it's not for cause?

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, I don't want to go into great detail about this particular contract, other than to say that the career folks who watched this process unfold in the last waning days of this last administration were very concerned about the process, the connections and relationships between people receiving this half-a-million-dollar contract, and what they intended to do with the resource, which the career folks felt was unnecessary and inappropriate.

They made a very strong and powerful case to me that the process wasn't followed as it should have been; their input was not valued as it should be. We put a lot of confidence in people who have been through this process before, in terms of knowing precisely how best to use these tax dollars. And this particular consulting contract -- I've looked at the details -- I didn't see any value to USDA from it. I will tell you that it was rather startling to see that a substantial amount of money had already been spent on foreign travel, which, under the circumstances, we did not think was appropriate.

In terms of litigation, I feel fairly confident on this one that we will prevail, and I'd be surprised if it's questioned.

Q Can you tell us, Mr. Secretary, who this involved and more details? It sounds like a rather startling discovery that you've made, and taxpayers probably would like to know more about it.

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, I think what taxpayers need to know is that every single department of government has now been charged by the President to review in detail the nature of contracts that we've entered into. In order to do what American families are doing -- American families are sitting down today and trying to decide, how do we save money, how do we eliminate unnecessary spending -- their expectation is the government does the same.

I don't want to get into details about this, but I will tell you that I think it's appropriate for us to do this. I'm glad the President has instructed us to do this, and I think we'll probably continue to find savings.

Q But why not get into details? This is government funds -- the public has a right to know, with all due respect.

SECRETARY VILSACK: I'm happy to share -- I don't want to step on protocol here -- I'm happy to share, if Mr. Gibbs expects it to be --

Q Transparent? (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: Lay it out. I'm all for it.

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, it involves an individual by the name of Stan Johnson who had a close connection with the previous administration. It was a consulting contract for half a million dollars; a substantial amount of money was spent for foreign travel. To be honest with you, we saw very little, if any, value to the USDA. And a number of career folks were very concerned about how the process unfolded. And had their input been valued, the contract would not have been entered into.

Q Is this like a favoritism thing, Mr. Secretary?

SECRETARY VILSACK: You know, I don't know about that. I don't know. I just know that there was a close connection. It was a contract that I think was unnecessary, and I know the career people were very concerned about the way in which it unfolded.

Q Consulting on what issue, sir? Consulting on what issue?

SECRETARY VILSACK: Well, that's a good question, and I can't answer it.

Q Can we get more details from your department later?

SECRETARY VILSACK: Yes, be happy to.

Here's a little interview with Stan Johnson. He tried to give some background to what he actually did for the USDA, but mainly it appeared to involve flying from his home in Reno to Washington to work for something called the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy. Their senior fellows include John Block, the Secretary of Agriculture under Ronald Reagan, and Dan Glickman, Agriculture Secretary under Bill Clinton. And by the way, the NCFAP still has two other contracts with the USDA.

As these things go, NCFAP doesn't even sound all that bad, but this is just one example of the insidious web of official Washington, between think tanks and contractors and politicians and journalists and staffers and hangers-on, that Obama is basically taking on with this effort. It's necessary, but it's going to be a very hard road that's bound to be more than a little disappointing along the way.

Tackling Waste

This is a good way for the Obama Administration to deflect the rise of the fiscal responsibility scolds. There is plenty of room for cuts in the federal budget, but they are typically places that the so-called "moderates" don't want to go. In that Politico tick-tock Ben Nelson objected to reductions in Big Ag subsidies because, well, he's from a farm state. And there are plenty of these moderates with defense contractors in their districts who won't like the effort to clean up that process.

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the U.S. government was paying too much for things it did not need and ordered a crackdown on spending he declared was "plagued by massive cost overruns and outright fraud."

Obama said wasteful spending was a problem across the whole government but he zeroed in on the defense industry after earlier citing a project to build a new presidential helicopter fleet as an example of the procurement process "gone amok."

"The days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over," Obama told reporters.

He ordered a reform of the way the government did business, a move he said would save taxpayers $40 billion a year and help cut the budget deficit, which he has forecast will hit $1.75 trillion for the 2009 fiscal year.

$40 billion a year in savings is more than every federal earmark over the last two years. At least those actually create something. Procurement overruns are just a handout.

If you want spending cuts, there are plenty of places to cut. So, it's up to the moderates to decide whether they believe in fiscal responsibility or not.

...Spencer Ackerman has quite a bit more, and it's a pretty big deal.

Obama today issued a memorandum to the heads of all the executive departments agencies directing them to restrict no-bid contracts; to rein in outsourcing of “inherently governmental activities”; and to, if necessary, cancel wasteful contracts outright. The crucial paragraph, even if it’s written in bureaucratese, particularly calls out the Defense Department:

"I hereby direct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in collaboration with the Secretary of Defense, the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Administrator of General Services, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and the heads of such other agencies as the Director of OMB determines to be appropriate, and with the participation of appropriate management councils and program management officials, to develop and issue by July 1, 2009, Government-wide guidance to assist agencies in reviewing, and creating processes for ongoing review of, existing contracts in order to identify contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, or not otherwise likely to meet the agency’s needs, and to formulate appropriate corrective action in a timely manner. Such corrective action may include modifying or canceling such contracts in a manner and to the extent consistent with applicable laws, regulations, and policy."

Clearly, this has applications far beyond the Pentagon. But the list of big-ticket defense items that have experienced huge cost overruns is a long one. Future Combat Systems in the Army; the Littoral Combat Ship in the Navy; the Joint Strike Fighter in the Air Force — all of these programs, near and dear to the services, have run massively over budget. If I was a lobbyist for Lockheed or Boeing, I’d be dialing my contacts in the Pentagon and the Hill to figure out what the prospective damage to my company was. And then I’d come up with a strategy to fight this forthcoming Office of Management and Budget review.

Here's the memorandum. In it, the President notes that contracting costs have doubled since 2001 (well, that's an interesting date to start with), with increases in no-bid contracts and overruns. The cost-plus system actually creates an incentive to contractors to spend taxpayer money lavishly. We're talking a lot of money.

A GAO study last year of 95 major defense acquisitions projects found cost overruns of 26 percent, totaling $295 billion over the life of the projects. Improved contract oversight could reduce such sums significantly.

Obama really took a shot across the bow today, not only to end waste and abuse, but to END THE PRIVATIZATION OF GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS and the greed it engendered.

However, the line between inherently governmental activities that should not be outsourced and commercial activities that may be subject to private sector competition has been blurred and inadequately defined. As a result, contractors may be performing inherently governmental functions. Agencies and departments must operate under clear rules prescribing when outsourcing is and is not appropriate.

Great work. But we have to make sure there's a good follow-through. One of the point people on this procurement reform is deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn, who was a Raytheon lobbyist. The military-industrial complex is not going to be easily calmed or dismantled. But we now have the words of the chief executive, who is willing to fight.

So Let's Talk About Spending

Today House Republicans are going to engage in an extended whine about the omnibus federal spending bill, which they claim is being pushed through in the dead of night even though the bills have been written and available for over a year. This is a leftover from FY2009 because George Bush constantly threatened to veto the bills. But be sure to hear plenty of Republicans clamor about "runaway spending" today. They're even planning on calling for a spending freeze in the midst of a recession where government spending is practically the only economic activity available. But if they want to yammer on about waste, they might want to look in the mirror.

Republicans are expected to deliver a daylong rant Wednesday against Democratic spending legislation, yet the bill is loaded with thousands of pet projects that Republican lawmakers inserted.

Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, included $142,500 for emergency repairs to the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., joined state colleagues to include $1.425 million for Nevada "statewide bus facilities." The top two Republicans on Congress' money committees also inserted local projects.

In all, an estimated $3.8 billion worth of specific projects, called "earmarks," are in the $410 billion spending bill that the House of Representatives is to vote on Wednesday. Easy passage is expected. The Senate is expected to act soon, too, since federal agencies will run out of money a week from Friday unless new funds are enacted.

It should be noted that the earmarks are less than 1% of the overall spending. And increases for appropriations like the Congressional budget, for example, are a cause of the GOP wanting to keep the same number of staffers despite having 20% less members of Congress, turning the whole concept of welfare on its head.

The strongest part of Obama's speech last night, in my view, was when he identified the hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars in the federal budget that are entirely a consequence of corporate welfare, contractor fraud and a host of other methods that the GOP has been using for decades to funnel cash out of the Treasury to their contributors. They want to have a conversation about "fiscal responsibility" that slashes any worthwhile investment in people, while keeping intact the flows into executive bank statements and massive trust funds. They have played budget games for years, hiding the true costs of their giveaways to the rich, and this is the reckoning. We don't have a spending problem, we have a priority problem. And President Obama is vowing to fix it.

In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.

Our job is to hold the President to this rhetorical flourish, as he'll doubtlessly be under a lot of pressure to do the opposite. But what this said to me is that Republicans and fiscal scolds are being called out. If they want to talk about runaway spending, they have to be willing to talk about where the waste actually is. There's been a class warfare in this country for 30 years and the rich have won. This is the blueprint to turning that around.

Military-Industrial Complex Stretches Their Tentacles

We're not going to get rid of lobbyists completely anytime soon. They are backed not only by lots of money but Constitutional protections (the right to petition your government for redress of grievances). And bills like the recovery package are catnip for lobbyists who want to get a piece of the action of all that money flowing into projects from the Feds (though I think the AP makes it out to be more sinister than it is). Obama has laudably tried to put in safeguards against this process and make ethics reform a hallmark of his Presidency.

The message is weakened by putting a Raytheon lobbyist into the #2 position at the Pentagon. Especially when the #1 position is Bush's leftover Defense Secretary. So the most senior appointment at Defense is someone who explicitly violates Obama's own ethics rules.

William Lynn III, the top lobbyist for Raytheon Co., was chosen by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the position of deputy secretary of Defense.

The new ethics rules banned lobbyists from serving in the administration. But the executive order allowed waivers to let some former lobbyists take government jobs if doing so was in the public interest.

On Thursday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the armed services committee, said he would need further information on the White House waiver for Lynn before considering his nomination.

Levin said he was worried that if Lynn had to recuse himself from any issue that could affect Raytheon, he would be unable to do his job effectively. The Pentagon deputy typically runs much of the day-to-day operation of the Defense Department and handles many key budget and procurement decisions.

Raytheon, one of the five largest U.S. defense contractors, is a key supplier of missiles and radar to the military. The Waltham, Mass.-based company also produces components of the missile defense system.

Great, so #2 at Defense will have at least some tangential interest in keeping the missile defense boondoggle alive.

The article claims that Bob Gates was the one who really pushed for this appointment. I would argue that the entire military-industrial complex did the pushing. The corporate infestation of military issues over the last 50 years has ensured that the only people qualified for these civilian jobs must have ties to industry. This is at least one area where I wouldn't expect a whole lot of change.

Clinton's Confirmation Hearing

I watched a good bit of the Clinton nomination hearings this morning, and I did it on C-SPAN, because I didn't want to hear the gasbags going on and on about all those terrible conflicts of interests between the Secretary of State and the Clinton Foundation. Um, wasn't Hillary Clinton a SENATOR before all this? If these conflicts with the Clinton Foundation getting cash from foreign governments to influence American foreign policy are a conflict now, wouldn't they have been before? Furthermore, what giant political family DOESN'T have conflict of interest ties like this? It just seems like this manufactured outrage is practically reserved for the Clintons.

The latest high school-level argument that the press is making is that John Kerry wanted the job and now that he's Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, there are going to be all kinds of petty animosities and grumbling. Have these reporters evolved at all from the time when the key question was who was going to ask who to the prom?

So I'd rather focus on the specifics, at least as I saw them. There's an AP writeup of the hearing here.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that she intends to revitalize the mission of diplomacy in American foreign policy, calling for a "smart power" strategy in the Middle East and implicitly criticizing the Bush administration for having downgraded the role of arms control [...]

"America cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America," she said, her daughter Chelsea seated behind her in the audience. "The best way to advance America's interest in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions. This isn't a philosophical point. This is our reality." [...]

In discussing the problem of peacemaking in the Middle East, Clinton referred to her husband's extensive, though ultimately unsuccessful, efforts to strike a comprehensive peace deal.

"As intractable as the Middle East's problems may seem and many presidents, including my husband, have spent years trying to help work out a resolution, we cannot give up on peace," she said. She said that she and Obama are "deeply sympathetic to Israel's desire to defend itself" against Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip but also worried about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

"We must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power in the Middle East that addresses the security needs of Israel and the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the Palestinians; that effectively challenges Iran to end its nuclear weapons program and sponsorship of terror, and persuades both Iran and Syria to abandon their dangerous behavior and become constructive regional actors." she said.

I think you're going to hear "smart power" a lot during Clinton's tenure. It fits the combination of tough-minded diplomacy and global cooperation we can expect from her, and it's certainly a break with the past.

Top dislike: the continued use of "all options are on the table" when it comes to Iran. Our rhetoric is not only overheated, but everyone seems to have forgotten that the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran showed that they stopped their nuclear program four years ago. You don't have to believe that, but you could at least cite it.

Top like: Clinton over and over again suggested that our over-reliance on contractors weakens our national security and is not even fiscally responsible. The multiple abuses by contractors trouble her, and she feels that State Department personnel can better handle the job and would not have to be constantly retrained. However, Clinton neglected to call for a ban on mercenaries, which was a campaign promise of hers. She needs to be pushed on that. Also, Clinton will be dogged in her efforts to secure the proper funding for the department and bring into balance the State/Defense relationship. On more than one occasion she has said that the Pentagon has 10 times the budget of Foggy Bottom, and they have been carrying out functions usually reserved for State. As even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said yesterday, we need less of a reliance on the military in foreign policy, which speaks well of the effort to get someone of such prominence to helm the State Department.

There was also talk of Afghanistan, which I'll get to in a later post.

Ya Can't Fight City Hall

So much for shrinking the size of the military budget.

President-elect Barack Obama appointed a defense contractor's executive Thursday to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, acknowledging that his choice appeared to break with his self-imposed rules to keep lobbyists at arm's length.

William J. Lynn III, Obama's choice for deputy defense secretary, is a former Pentagon official who now is senior vice president for government operations at Raytheon Co. Lynn hasn't been a registered lobbyist since July, meaning he can't personally lobby Congress or the White House. In the first three months of 2008, his lobbying team reported spending $1.15 million to influence issues involving missiles, sensors and radar, advanced technology programs and intelligence funding.

Obama's transition is calling Lynn the "exception" to his long-held policy of discouraging lobbyists who worked in the same field as their appointment from his Administration. But he's not fooling anyone. This is more revolving-door politics.

The military budget is strangling this nation. The US accounts for as much defense spending as the rest of the world combined. And the threats we face are not best countered by large weapons systems anymore.

Doesn't matter. That's why they call it a military-industrial COMPLEX.

It will be difficult for Lynn to avoid defense issues related to Raytheon, said James Thurber, who teaches lobbying at American University.

"I think it's impossible in our system not to have people that have been in the advocacy system," he said. "They're the people who know the issues and have the expertise." The key is for the administration to disclose those connections and avoid financial conflicts, he said.

The key is for everyone to acknowledge the problem - an extreme amount of power handed over to defense contractors. It's just as Eisenhower warned 50 years ago. Stephen Walt writes:

You'd think that this would be the ideal time to rethink our global military strategy and look for some savings in the defense area. I'm not talking radical disarmament, but I don't mean just canceling gold-plated programs like the F-22 or abandoning the chimaera of national missile defense. If America has to tighten its belt, shouldn't that include DOD?

Here's why it won't happen any time soon. As Cindy Williams, former director of the National Security division of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior research scientist at MIT, points out in an as-yet unpublished paper for the Tobin Project, DOD is insulated from serious cuts by an array of impressive political advantages. First, its budget is more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and its sheer size gives it a lot of bureaucratic clout. Second, the Pentagon has a large domestic constituency: there are 1.4 million men and women in uniform, 850,000 paid members of the National Guard and Reserve, and 650,000 civilian employees. Forget GM, Ford and Chrysler: the Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the whole country. Now add the companies that provide goods and services for the military. Their employees amount to about 5.2 million jobs, which is a pretty impressive domestic constituency. And don’t forget those 25 million veterans, who are hardly shrinking violets when defense spending is concerned. Finally, a well-financed group of Beltway bandits and Washington think tanks stand ready to question the patriotism of any politician (and especially any Democrat) who tries to put the Pentagon on a diet.

So don't expect the military to take a serious budget hit anytime soon.

Sad, really. That's a sacred cow that is going to take years, even decades, to reverse.

Fiscal Responsibility I Can Believe In

I'm resisting the temptation to analyze every little story about what the incoming Obama Administration might or might not do once in office. I can probably find you 10 stories that would suggest progressive boldness (the Office of Urban Policy, going big on stimulus, negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan) and just as many that would suggest the polar opposite (Larry Summers, no material change in intelligence policy, general wariness to call the election a progressive mandate). All of them or none of them may be true; it depends on the unnamed source doing the leaking and how certain it is that they reflect Obama's thinking. I'm at pains to draw many conclusions from them.

However, the typical Village revisionism that warns incoming Democrats to dump the left or suffer the consequences does have me concerned. Clearly there is this emerging consensus that Obama simply must govern in a bipartisan fashion (I remember so clearly the same exact demands put on George W., don't you?) If the President-Elect were smart (and he is), he would use the concepts of this Pentagon advisory group to turn that argument upside-down.

A senior Pentagon advisory group, in a series of bluntly worded briefings, is warning President-elect Barack Obama that the Defense Department's current budget is "not sustainable," and he must scale back or eliminate some of the military's most prized weapons programs.

The briefings were prepared by the Defense Business Board, an internal management oversight body. It contends that the nation's recent financial crisis makes it imperative that the Pentagon and Congress slash some of the nation's most costly and troubled weapons to ensure they can finance the military's most pressing priorities.

Those include rebuilding ground forces battered by multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan and expanding the ranks to wage the war on terrorism.

"Business as usual is no longer an option," according to one of the internal briefings prepared in late October for the presidential transition, copies of which were provided to the Globe. "The current and future fiscal environments facing the department demand bold action."

This is pretty obvious. But Washington works on the shared fiction that military funding doesn't involve real money, but magic cash growing on a fantasy unicorn tree somewhere in Langley. Blue Dogs like to talk about fiscal discipline, but get funding from contributors and provide jobs for their constituents through these bloated contracts. There is a cottage industry funneling cash to these contractors, and they're exceedingly powerful.

However, despite the long odds this is a battle worth waging. Busting this fiction would remove a major institutional constraint to the progressive agenda - while the Pentagon just wants to use the money saved from outdated weapons systems to fund internal improvements and armed forces expansion, eventually the capital costs would fade and the weapons contracts wouldn't come back. And mind you, we're talking about massive, budget-busting sums, without much justification.

A recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, assessed the Pentagon's 95 largest weapons programs and found that as of March 2008 they had collectively increased in cost by nearly $300 billion over initial estimates.

"None had proceeded through development while meeting the best-practice standards for mature technologies, stable design, and mature production processes all prerequisites for achieving planned cost and schedule outcomes," the GAO said in documents published last week to help guide the presidential transition.

It added: "Over the next five years, [the Defense Department] expects to invest more than $357 billion on major defense acquisition programs. Much of this investment will be used to address cost overruns rooted in poor planning, execution, and oversight."

All the branches of the military are in a similar situation. The Army plans to invest an estimated $160 billion in the coming years on a set of new combat vehicles collectively known as the Future Combat System. But their capabilities "are still early in development and have not yet been demonstrated," according to GAO.

$300 billion here, $300 billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. Enough to finance a new energy grid or universal health care.

(Incidentally, skyrocketing health care costs are one of the military's biggest burdens - over half of their budget goes to personnel costs, including $60 billion for health care.)

This is obviously an area where the pull of lobbyists and the military-industrial complex would be extreme. Of course this is a Defense Department internal agency making the recommendation, so there are at least some allies to be rallied. Defense contractors have shops in practically every Congressional district in America, for just this reason, so they can characterize any reduction in their payments as a jobs issue.

But there are opportunities to convert these manufacturing jobs - into clean energy construction, building out broadband, creating a 21st-century energy grid to transmit alternative forms of energy, repairing and modernizing infrastructure. Those would be sustainable jobs based on creation rather than destruction. It happens to be more fiscally responsible than the current path, too.

Indeed, the Obama Administration has already signaled an end to replacement nuclear warheadsm (as part of a big picture strategy to rid the world of nuclear weapons) and missile defense:

The incoming administration, according to the paper, may retool the intelligence under secretary office established by Donald Rumsfeld; create a new high-level energy security post; and divide the substantial portfolio of the assistant secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities.

It will also mull cuts to high-profile weapon systems, the paper states, naming three: national missile defense, the Airborne Laser and the Army's Future Combat Systems program.

Selling this to the Village as exactly the neo-Hooverist fiscal austerity they appear to be looking for, while going big in terms of a stimulus package. And putting all appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan on budget would mean that the Bush Dogs couldn't abandon their supposed fiscal principles in favor of "supporting the troops."

If there's one area where Obama should highlight a commitment to reining in spending it ought to be the military budget. It's dangerous, and the powerful forces who want the gravy train to continue would be gunning for him. But with a ground army of supporters willing to help, I think you might be able to sufficiently confuse the Village into thinking of this as a bipartisan, transpartisan, postpartisan kneecapping of the Left.

...I hope it doesn't seem like I'm buying into this Village tenet that all Democratic Administrations must only act in a bipartisan fashion. In fact, the polls show that they actually want full Democratic control of government so that the country can actually function. But that will erode if these Village means go unchecked, and a good way to deal with it is to subvert them.