Congressional defense lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are lining up behind the Pentagon’s plan to revamp its business model, according to one House Republican.
“There is a bipartisan and bicameral interest” in giving the Defense Department the legislative leeway it needs to fundamentally change the way it does business, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas.) said Monday.
Thornberry, head of the House defense subcommittee, said Pentagon-led efforts to reform its acquisition process has the backing of committee ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Senate defense panel chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).
“All along the way, it is, of course, not only essential to work with [the Pentagon], but also with the services up and down the chain of command,” Thornberry said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall made the case for the department’s reform plan last week, and noted the need for congressional backing.
“What is needed, frankly, is for [DOD] to go back and take a look at all the things essentially that we’ve done [and] that have piled on somewhat independently and made our program managers’ lives incredibly complex,” said Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer.
“I want to work closely with [Capitol] Hill on this. I think this is not something we ought to do in isolation,” Kendall said in a speech earlier this month in Washington.
The last major effort to revamp the department’s business practiced came under the landmark Goldwater-Nichols Act, spearheaded by former House Armed Services Committee chief Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.).
The current system, according to Thornberry, “waste a lot of money and effort,” ultimately creating “more overhead and less fighting capability.”
But the ongoing threat of massive budget cuts under sequestration has turned up the heat in the acquisition reform debate.
Under sequestration, the Pentagon is staring down $500 billion in mandatory spending cuts. The cuts began in March and would reduce Pentagon spending by $52 billion next year.
“I know of no scenario that envisions a return to large yearly increases in the defense budget, short of some catastrophic event,” Thornberry said Monday.
“Even in the best case [scenario], we’ve got to face a dangerous, complicated world with limited resources. So we must get more defense for the dollar,” he added.
Defense budget hawks like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have demanded action from Congress and the Pentagon move to rein in the department’s buying practices.
Other lawmakers, however, are concerned possible changes could end up severely curtailing or eliminating outright weapons programs vital to a particular state or district’s local economy.
But with the next round of defense cuts right around the corner, Thornberry said lawmakers “will be happy to sit down with [DOD] and go line-by-line through the existing regulations” to find ways to improve the system.
Inside the Pentagon, department officials are already drafting their fiscal year 2015 budget plan, the department’s first spending blueprint with sequestration cuts factored in.
“There is a lot at stake, and . . . we have to do better,” both inside the Pentagon and within the halls of Congress, Thornberry said.