Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said the Department of Defense could use help from Congress on getting the legislative authority needed to begin cutting its civilian workforce.
Carter was speaking before the House Armed Services Committee for the first time as secretary and took several early questions from the committee chairman, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, on how the department can be made more efficient, particularly given the uncertain budget ahead.
Thornberry noted that under the last three years of budget cuts the Army and Marine Corps have seen significant reductions in end strength, but at the Pentagon “you haven’t seen commiserate reductions in the number of folks who work there,” Thornberry said.
“A number of people are concerned” in both parties, Thornberry said.
The Washington Examiner‘s analysis of direct-hire civilians at the Pentagon, based on the Pentagon’s annually reported numbers, shows that the Pentagon has been highly resistant to cutting its civilian workforce even as it took deep cuts in readiness and future procurement in the last three years.
For example, in response to a directive to cut 20 percent of the civilians in each of the service headquarters, each of the services did make those cuts. But based on the figures the Pentagon has reported, the civilians were absorbed back into DOD’s overall overhead — so very little actual reduction was achieved.
Carter told the panel that he would “very much appreciate your help on that issue. A lot of that falls on us. [But] in many cases we would benefit from legislative help.”
The legislative help could come in the form of authority to conduct a civilian reduction in force, known as a RIF, which sets the requirements and incentives that would empower the Pentagon to cut its workforce.
“We’ve got to, got to, got to get after these headquarters,” Carter said. “These offices that were set up at a time … it seemed like a good idea at the time but have lost their purpose or lost their way … we need to be aggressive with ourselves.”
Carter did not identify any particular office as an example of an office that needs to be cut, but said that if “all we are doing in a period of shrinking budgets … is shrinking tooth — and the tail remains the same size — that’s unjustifiable.”
