Defense: More, Please - eorge W. Bush and the Department of Defense budget - Brief Article

National Review, March 5, 2001

Help may still be on the way-just not yet. The Bush administration has rankled conservatives on Capitol Hill by deferring any significant increase in the defense budget until it completes a "top-to-bottom review" of military strategy. For Republicans who took seriously the Bush campaign's catch-the-falling-flag rhetoric about morale and readiness, and who know the dubious place that top-to-bottom reviews occupy in the Beltway cosmos (somewhere between a blue-ribbon panel and a bipartisan commission), this smells like a broken promise.

It's not-at least not yet. In his September 1999 speech on military policy at The Citadel, Bush promised an immediate $1 billion for increased pay, a review of America's commitments abroad (with an eye to ending U.S. civics work in the Balkans), deployment of a missile- defense system, and a comprehensive rethinking of American military policy in an effort to rationalize Pentagon practices and to invest in "skipping a generation of technology."

Bush has so far followed his script. He has delivered on the pay raise (the easy part). He is tapping on the brakes of our Balkans commitment. His evident seriousness about missile defense has already softened the opposition of our allies to the idea. And, of course, the reviewing and rethinking is in full swing. But there was an implicit promise in Bush's talk of a readiness crisis that he would, if elected, provide some immediate relief (why campaign against a crisis you are only going to perpetuate?). Analysts who agree with Bush's wheels-coming-off assessment of the military say a $5-10 billion spending boost is necessary just to keep the Army stocked in ammunition and the Navy from having to cancel deployments. But this hasn't been forthcoming, as the White House halted a scramble at Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department to prepare a supplemental spending bill that would have addressed the readiness gap.

There are two tactical considerations at play. While working to pass its tax bill, the administration doesn't want the distraction of a supplemental spending bill that could grow larger and highlight Capitol Hill's fiscal incontinence. Understandable. But it hasn't been so shy about pushing additional educational spending (and without the benefit of a top-to-bottom review, which might have established the worthlessness of such spending-but never mind). The other goal is to whack a rolled-up newspaper across the noses of the Joint Chiefs, establishing that the Bushies mean business in reforming the Pentagon. Conservatives may instinctively recoil at anyone saying no to the chiefs, but this might be a worthwhile drill, so long as it advances the long-term goal of changing the way the Pentagon works, and so long as-message successfully sent-the supplemental spending comes this year.

It is important to remember that the Defense Department is a bureaucracy, too, beset by all the usual turf battles and shortsightedness. The services currently clamor for weapons systems that are based on fighting the last war (or the one before that), and that are often flatly nonsensical. Everyone agrees that the Army needs to be lighter and more mobile, for instance, but it persists in pursuing its "Crusader" artillery gun, which is as lithe as a rhino and can fit on a cargo plane only one at a time. Imposing order on this process and carefully planning a future force-rather than lumbering along, just at a slightly accelerated clip-is a basic civilian responsibility, neglected by the Clinton administration. But no one should assume it will be cheap. Some estimate that the military is underfunded, long term, by $100 billion a year.

Procurement of a missile-defense system alone will cost several billion a year more. As Bush said at The Citadel, "This will require spending more-and spending more wisely." The administration is now attending to "more wisely," but soon-very soon-it will have to attend simply to "more."