Bipartisanship on Defense Spending: Schlesinger and Brown Call for Sustained Increase in National Security Funding

(Washington, D.C.): As the Bush-Cheney team prepares to appoint its Secretary of Defense,
the
true — and staggeringly high — price of accomplishing the “rebuilding of the U.S. military” is
coming into focus. Performing on that campaign pledge will take more than “reforming the
Pentagon.” And, unfortunately, it will take far more than the $45 billion over ten years Gov.
Bush promised to invest in defense.

The latest indication of what will be entailed comes on the heels of warnings over the past
year
by Marine Corps Commandant General James Jones, the Congressional Budget Office and —
after the election — Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters and the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton. In today’s Washington Post, two former
Secretaries of
Defense, the Nixon and Ford Administration’s James Schlesinger and the Carter
Administration’s Harold Brown, make clear that fixing the armed forces may require as much as
an additional $100 billion per year for the next five-to-ten years.

An early test of President Bush’s commitment to rebuild the military and his choice to
succeed
Messrs. Schlesinger and Brown will be whether the new team is willing to heed — and act upon
— this bipartisan call for a large and sustained increase in defense spending.

In this year’s presidential campaign, both major candidates spoke easily of spending trillions
more in coming years on domestic needs such as Social Security and Medicare. In contrast, they
said little and proposed to add only marginally to spending on national security. Yet over the
next decade, the nation will need to spend significantly more certainly hundreds of billions of
dollars on defense and foreign assistance if we are to maintain a military force capable of doing
the things that both candidates seemed to feel it would have to do.

The U.S. military that President-elect Bush inherits, while far superior to any other, is not
what it
needs to be. Over the past decade, it has been asked to triple its overseas deployments and
operations with substantially fewer resources. America’s armed forces are now 40 percent
smaller than they were during the Cold War, and they are severely stretched. Problems with
maintaining the readiness of today’s military include a need for parts for planes, ships and tanks,
as well as the fact that many troops are not getting their full quota of realistic training. Morale is
declining, as evidenced by the difficulty in recruiting and retaining skilled personnel in the face
of competing opportunities in the private sector.

The issues that will determine the capabilities of tomorrow’s military are even more acute. A
few
weeks ago the Congressional Budget Office released a study concluding that we need to spend at
least $50 billion more each year just to keep our armed forces at the present level of combat
capability. According to CBO, $75 billion or more is needed to perform the sort of wholesale
recapitalization of the U.S. military that has been made necessary by a decade of underfunding.

A thorough and independent assessment by Daniel Goure and Jeffrey Ranney indicates that it
would cost roughly $100 billion more a year to ensure that the armed forces have the kind and
quantity of equipment, realistic training and quality-of-life conditions that the Clinton
administration has said will be required in the years ahead. The bulk of this amount (roughly 80
percent) would go toward replacement of obsolescent aircraft, ships and tanks.

During the campaign, both major presidential candidates largely ignored this issue, pledging
to
increase defense spending between $45 billion (Gov. Bush) and $100 billion (Vice President
Gore) over the next 10 years. Moreover, the campaigns indicated that these sums would largely
be allocated to meet deficiencies in pay, housing and other quality-of-life areas.

Some justify this failure to address procurement needs on the grounds that the country now
needs
to “skip a generation,” passing up equipment now ready for use in favor of future systems that
will be more capable and less costly. There may well be a case for doing that. But there are also
current demands and new priorities that will require more spending in the next decade than either
candidate indicated he would seek.

Others have suggested that instead of modernizing the force with the next generation of
equipment, we can save money by buying more of the kinds of ships, aircraft and armored
vehicles we have today — thereby recapitalizing the force rather than modernizing it. But it is
precisely such attempts to skip a generation of procurement between the late 1980s and today
that have left the U.S. military with the problem of an obsolescent force.

Some money can be saved by not moving forward with new-generation systems, and indeed
a
careful review of programs now in early stages of development should be made by the new
administration, with a view toward reducing their number. But in many instances, these new
capabilities are required to meet new tasks.

This is a problem that cannot be solved without more money. The alternative, a substantial
reduction in force structure, must be resisted. Recent events in the Middle East should underscore
that we are living in unpredictable and even dangerous times. A strong military is a bulwark
against threats to U.S. vital interests and to our homeland.

While the additional sums required to restore our military are large in absolute terms, it must
be
remembered that the United States today spends slightly less than 3 percent of its gross domestic
product on defense, the lowest level since before Pearl Harbor.

Even with all the efficiencies and management improvements that are politically feasible, to
make up the current shortfall will require a phased increase in defense spending to a level about
20 percent higher than the present one. An additional one-half percent out of the national
economic dollar to be allocated to national security is well within the capability of the U.S.
economy. A small portion of this increase should be devoted to foreign assistance and to the
overseas operations of the State Department; starving diplomatic efforts also impairs national
security.

Clearly, this time of economic prosperity is the moment not only to make the investments
needed
to address other national priorities such as health care, education and “saving Social Security”
but also to save our national security.

James Schlesinger was secretary of defense from 1973 to 1975. Harold Brown held the
post from
1977 to 1981.