Gates getting even tougher--and more realistic--on the budget
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 12:04AM 
NYT piece by Thom Shanker.
Gates turns the budgetary screws a bit tighter:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered the military and the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy to find tens of billions of dollars in annual savings to pay for war-fighting operations, senior officials said Thursday.
His goal is $7 billion in spending cuts and efficiencies for 2012, growing to $37 billion annually by 2016.
Every modern defense secretary has declared war on Pentagon waste and redundancy. And there have been notable, but relatively narrow successes, in closing and consolidating military bases or in canceling a handful of weapons systems.
But if Mr. Gates’s sweeping plan is fully enacted, none of the armed services or Pentagon civilian agencies and directorates would be immune from the pain of annual cost-cutting, which would become institutionalized across the Defense Department.
The spending guidelines were delivered orally to senior military officers and civilian officials before Mr. Gates’s departure this week for an Asian security conference in Singapore, and the official signed guidance will be issued over coming days.
The goal is to force all of the Defense Department agencies and organizations, and all of the armed services, to save enough money in their management, personnel policies and logistics to guarantee 3 percent real growth each year, beyond inflation, in the accounts that pay for combat operations.
Current budget plans project growth of only 1 percent in the Pentagon budget, after inflation, over the next five years.
“Given the nation’s fiscal situation, there is an urgency to doing this, rather than shifting more of the nation’s resources toward national defense,” William J. Lynn III, the deputy defense secretary, said in an interview.
Mr. Gates’s spending orders offer a considerable incentive to the armed services. Each dollar in spending cuts found by a military department would be reinvested in the combat force of that branch, and not siphoned away for other purposes.
The last bit is the smartest. The services always fear that answering the call on budget discipline is a zero-sum game.
A grim reminder that contingency operations are not good for the defense establishment's bottom line--at least once the splurge mentality is curbed.
Reader Comments (1)
At least until the "Defense Establishment" figures out how much money can be made in supporting the SysAdmin function to a far greater good. Tom, you've blogged in the past about briefing the senior management of LockMart et al, how is the SysAdmin as Future Business Opportunity vision resonating in today's climate?
BTW, kudos on the replumbed website.