Armed Services panel suggests Defense needs more money
House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and the senior members of his committee Wednesday greeted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's presentation of the proposed $399 billion fiscal 2004 Defense budget with a bipartisan chorus of, "Is that all there is?"
Hunter, Armed Services ranking member Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and others questioned the adequacy of the total request and its various components. Several legislators objected to the lack of proposed funding to cover both the cost of the ongoing war on terrorism and the likely conflict with Iraq.
Rumsfeld defended President Bush's request as "a very fine budget," but added, "There is no doubt in my mind that we'll be back for a supplemental reasonably soon" to pay for those extra operational expenses.
He said the global war on terrorism and homeland security efforts cost about $1.5 billion a month, and the department has spent $2.1 billion mobilizing the forces to confront Iraq.
The secretary noted Congress had rejected the administration's request for a $10 billion contingency fund to cover those operational expenses in fiscal 2003. As a result, he said, the services are pulling money out of their training accounts and will run out of funds by this summer.
Rumsfeld spent a significant part of his opening statement complaining about the outdated budget procedures, personnel policies, acquisition systems and the reporting burdens imposed by Congress that he said keep the Pentagon from operating with the flexibility, speed and innovation it needs.
"We are fighting the first war of the 21st century with a Defense Department that was fashioned to meet the challenges of the mid-20th century," he said.
Rumsfeld said he would be proposing legislation to change the way the Pentagon handles its money, manages people and buys weapons. Those proposals include approving a two-year budget, something Congress has repeatedly rejected.
Convening his first formal hearing as chairman, Hunter thanked Rumsfeld for reversing "the decade-long decline" in Pentagon spending, and then added, "The Defense budget hole carved out during the 1990s will take more than two years' worth of significant increases to reverse."
Hunter expressed concern that the "modest 4 percent increase" in the total Pentagon request and the "marginal increases in the key modernization accounts" were not enough to meet the military's needs.
He cited estimates by congressional analysts and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the services need between $90 billion to $100 billion a year for procurement. The new budget seeks $72 billion.