Pentagon: Decrease Spending on Troops

Defense officials fear money will go to people at the expense of weapons

By Craig Whitlock
May 07, 2010 "Washington Post" -- WASHINGTON - The Pentagon, not usually known f
or its frugality, is pleading with Congress to stop spending so much money on th
e troops.
Through nine years of war, service members have seen a healthy rise in pay and b
enefits, leaving most of them better compensated than their peers in the private
sector.
Congress has been so determined to take care of troops and their families that f
or several years running it has overruled the Pentagon and mandated more generou
s pay raises than requested by the Bush and Obama administrations. It has also r
ejected attempts by the Pentagon to slow soaring health-care costs â which Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates has said are "eating us alive" â by hiking co-pays or r
aising premiums.
Now, Pentagon officials see fiscal calamity.
In the midst of two long-running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials
are increasingly worried that the government's generosity is unsustainable and
that it will leave them with less money to buy weapons and take care of equipmen
t.
Clifford L. Stanley, the undersecretary of defense for personnel, told a Senate
committee in March that rising personnel costs could "dramatically affect the re
adiness of the department" by leaving less money to pay for operations and maint
enance. Overall, personnel expenses constitute about one-quarter of defense spen
ding.
With Washington confronting record deficits, the Pentagon is bracing for an end
to the huge increases in defense spending over the past decade. On Saturday, Gat
es is scheduled to give a "hard-hitting" speech in Kansas on fiscal discipline,
in which he will warn military leaders that "we'll have to take some dramatic me
asures ourselves to sustain the force we have," his press secretary, Geoff Morre
ll, told reporters.
Fund weapons or people?
Health care alone is projected to cost the military $51 billion next year, nearl
y one-tenth of the Pentagon's budget, excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq an
d Afghanistan. Since 2002, wages have risen 42 percent, compared with about 32 p
ercent for the private sector. Housing and subsistence allowances, which troops
receive tax free, have gone up even more.
But Congress â including members opposed to the wars â has made clear that it consid
ers military pay and benefits sacrosanct, especially when service members and th
eir families are struggling to cope with repeated deployments to faraway conflic
ts.
"Both sides of the aisle are trying to send a very clear message to our military
that we appreciate their service," said Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), a member o
f the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of its military personnel subc
ommittee. She said the Pentagon needed to do a better job of setting priorities.
"We end up with a false choice â are we going to fund weapons or are we going to
fund people? The reality is, we need both."
The Pentagon's attempts to rein in personnel costs have also run into opposition
from powerful lobby groups. "Any attempt to link rising military personnel cost
s with shrinking military readiness is total nonsense," Thomas J. Tradewell Sr.,
leader of Veterans of Foreign Wars, said in response to Stanley's comments in M
arch.
Advocates for troops and retirees say the main reason for the increase in wages
is that they were way too low to begin with. In the late 1990s, after the milita
ry had been whittled down in size from its Cold War peak, studies found that ser
vice members earned about 13 percent less than workers in the private sector wit
h similar experience and education levels.
"We've been recovering from that ever since, plus we've had a decade of war, whi
ch has created a tremendous national sympathy," said Steven P. Strobridge, a ret
ired Air Force colonel who serves as director of government relations for the Mi
litary Officers Association of America. "We're extracting sacrifices from today'
s forces that are just unprecedented."
Military officials said generous compensation packages were a primary reason why
they were able to meet all of their annual recruiting goals last year for the f
irst time since the all-volunteer force was established in 1973. Although the re
cession also played a major role, military leaders said surveys show service mem
bers are generally happy with their pay scales.
Vice Adm. Mark E. Ferguson III, the chief of naval personnel, said improvements
in pay and benefits have made it more likely that sailors will stick around long
er. Last year, a Navy survey found that about 60 percent of spouses wanted their
sailors to make a career of Navy life, meaning a stint of at least 20 years. In
2005, he said, only about 20 percent of spouses felt the same way.
"I think pay was previously a concern, but it's started to change," Ferguson sai
d. He added that Congress had been "extremely generous" but that rising personne
l costs were already influencing what the Navy spends to operate, maintain and m
odernize its fleet.
'Huge burden'
The Pentagon wants a pay raise of 1.4 percent for service members next year, an
increase based on the Employment Cost Index, which the Labor Department uses to
measure private sector salary increases. Congress, as it has for the past severa
l years, has indicated it favors a slightly bigger bump, of 1.9 percent.
Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Analysis, said the extra half percent may not sound like much, but it would acc
rue annually and cost about $3.5 billion over the next decade. "If you continue
doing it, it becomes a huge burden on the defense budget in the long term," he s
aid.
Other well-meaning programs to support service members and their families have t
urned into budgetary Frankensteins.
In February, the Pentagon abruptly shut down a new tuition-assistance program fo
r military spouses after it was overwhelmed with applicants. Defense officials h
ad set aside $61 million for the program, which reimburses tuition costs of up t
o $6,000 per person, but discovered they might need as much as $2 billion to sat
isfy unexpected demand.
Congress chastised the Pentagon for mismanaging the program, which has since res
umed, though defense officials aren't sure how they'll pay for it.
Turkey says Syria, Qatar back Iran plan
(AFP) â 2 hours ago
ISTANBUL â Syria and Qatar back Turkish efforts for a diplomatic solution to the r
ow over Iran's nuclear programme, Turkey's foreign minister said after leaders o
f the three countries met Sunday, a report said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad an
d Qatar's ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, held three-way talks in Ista
nbul to discuss regional affairs.
Ahmet Davutoglu said the Syrian and Qatari leaders both supported Ankara's effor
ts to mediate between Western powers and Iran, among them a proposal to host tal
ks over Tehran's nuclear activities, Anatolia news agency reported.
"The three countries condemned recent rhetoric and actions raising tensions in t
he region... They emphasized support for all efforts aimed at regional peace and
stability," the minister was quoted as saying.
Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani was also in Turkey Sunday, holding talks
with President Abdullah Gul in Istanbul at the start of a three-day visit, but
no statement was made after the meeting, Anatolia reported.
Turkey and Brazil, both non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, are op
posed to fresh sanctions against Iran, sought by the United States, and have rec
ently stepped up diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff.
Davutoglu said Friday he had proposed to host talks between top Iranian nuclear
negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, as a repre
sentative of world powers in the so-called P5+1 group, to break the standoff ove
r Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran has welcomed the idea and a reply is awaited from Ashton, he said.
On Monday, Larijani was expected to attend a meeting of parliament speakers and
lawmakers from 28 Muslim countries in Istanbul to discuss Israeli plans to expan
d Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, which have infuriated the Muslim world.
The secretary-general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin
Ihsanoglu, and Erdogan were also expected to attend the talks.
The Turkish, Syrian and Qatari leaders discussed also the Israeli settlement pla
ns in their talks on Sunday, branding them "unacceptable" and stressing that "Is
rael must abandon these policies," Davutoglu said.
They also urged "an end to actions that will harm efforts to preserve the histor
ical and religious identity of East Jerusalem," he said.
Assad was in Turkey for a two-day visit, scheduled to end later Sunday, while th
e Qatari emir arrived earlier in the day and left after the meeting.