A federal union representing 270,000 Defense Department workers is urging Rep. Mac Thornberry to scrap his plan for deep cuts in military support agencies.
The Texas Republican, the House Armed Services chairman, should pull his bill proposing about $25 billion in across-the-board cuts to 28 DOD agencies and instead opt for reviews every five years without setting goals for reducing spending, the American Federation of Government Employees wrote in a letter Thursday to the chairman.
“We respectfully suggest that the committee pull back the [bill] draft because of the misconceptions about defense agencies,” wrote J. David Cox, who is the national president of the union.
Cox referred to expert testimony this week before the House Armed Services Committee by former Defense Department officials who said it is unrealistic to expect a 25 percent reduction among the department’s so-called Fourth Estate, a collection of agencies and activities not directly within the military services that comprise about $100 billion in annual spending.
About two-thirds of the spending goes to defense healthcare, intelligence operations, missile defense, and special operations, which are all areas unlikely to be cut, according to the testimony.
Cox also wrote that the five-year reviews required by Thornberry’s legislation should also be revised because they are “biased in the direction of mandating ‘reductions’ mischaracterized as ‘savings.’”
AFGE represents about 700,000 federal employees spread over 70 agencies.
Thornberry unveiled his ambitious plan earlier this week as a discussion draft that could be included in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which his committee is now writing.
He argues that spending among the agencies has ballooned, which is slowing decision-making at the Pentagon at a crucial time of growing international threats.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member on the Armed Services committee, said he was worried about the proposed cuts because they could be damaging to the military’s mission.
