A debate over Rep. Mac Thornberry’s newly unveiled proposal to slash $25 billion in Pentagon support services quickly veered into opposition and thorny political issues on Wednesday.
The top Democrat on Thornberry’s Armed Services Committee warned such cuts could be damaging and endanger thousands of jobs, and experts called to testify for a morning hearing cautioned that the lion’s share of the spending will likely be off-limits.
To get such deep cuts, House lawmakers might need to consider closing some bases or squeezing military schools and grocery stores, issues that have been political non-starters in the past, they testified.
On Tuesday, Thornberry rolled out legislation that would impose a mandatory 25 percent across-the-board cut to the Pentagon’s $100 billion so-called Fourth Estate, the 28 agencies and activities that exist outside the military services, and eliminate seven agencies altogether.
“What these people do is not irrelevant. There are a number of portions in the so-called Fourth Estate that are essential to assisting the warfighter and making sure that they are ready for the fight,” said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the committee’s ranking member.
Smith released a statement before the hearing Wednesday saying the cuts could do serious damage to the Pentagon’s information infrastructure, testing ranges, and community support as well as basic functions in Washington by “eliminating critical agencies in one stroke.”
During the rollout to reporters, the chairman said the savings from his proposal could equal $25 billion or more, though staff cautioned that figure could change. The legislation was timed so it can be considered as part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act.
Thornberry said the support services are causing bureaucratic bloat, slowing Pentagon decision-making and eating up funding.
“The purpose of all this is not just to make cuts, it is to have more resources in the hands of the warfighter faster, and as everybody on both sides of the aisle keeps reminding me, we don’t have unlimited resources around here, and the world is not getting any safer,” Thornberry said.
But the available savings may be much smaller than expected, said Peter Levine, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses who is the Pentagon’s former deputy chief management officer.
“I think it’s important not to have unreasonable expectations as we look at the Fourth Estate … a huge part of the Fourth Estate budget goes to the defense intelligence agencies, the Missile Defense Agency, and the U.S. Special Operations Command,” Levine said. “So, there is a huge warfighting function that is in the Fourth Estate.”
About one-third of the $100 billion budget goes to those activities, and another one-third goes to the military’s health programs, he said. The Fourth Estate pot of money also funds the military’s worldwide system of schools and grocery stores, as well as technology programs such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“If all those entities are essentially considered to be off the table for budget reductions, and I don’t mean to imply there are no efficiencies possible, but for large budget reductions … we’re looking at about a quarter of the Fourth Estate left to look at,” Levine said.
The elimination of seven agencies also would not reap large savings if the goal is to cut 25 percent of the total spending, said Preston Dunlap, a national security analysis mission area executive at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
It would reduce the Fourth Estate budget by about 2 percent, Dunlap said.
He said bigger reductions could require targeting military schools and commissaries with cuts or eliminating unneeded military facilities as part of the Base Realignment and Closure program, which lawmakers have resisted for years.
“I think Congress will have to take a careful look at whether they are open to issues like … what has typically been off the table with BRACs or education or commissaries because you have to get agencies that are large to achieve that kind of savings,” he said.
