Military braces for billions in budget cuts

After years of record spending, the military is bracing for billions in Pentagon-endorsed cuts, but the ultimate savings yielded in the department's fiscal 2007 budget might be diminished if lawmakers opt to save pet programs.

As part of a government-wide effort to control spending and trim the federal deficit, the military services are poring over their books, attempting to cut budgets on some big-ticket procurement items to help the department find about $15 billion in cuts for fiscal 2007, analysts and former department officials said.

Even if the department succeeds, the trend in Congress has long been to defy Pentagon plans by saving favorite weapons systems from the chopping blocks while slashing budgets for projects with little support on Capitol Hill.

"It's really strange how Congress has the tendency to be independent and think for themselves on these issues," House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., quipped Wednesday.

For instance, congressional defense committees this year opposed Pentagon plans to terminate C-130J cargo aircraft purchases after buying 12 additional KC-130J planes for the Marine Corps. The Pentagon later reversed its decision, but not before several members of Congress vowed to set aside funding to continue the procurement.

Key lawmakers, including Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., also have bristled at the Pentagon's plans to retire the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier to reduce the fleet from 12 to 11 carriers.

In the fiscal 2005 wartime supplemental, Congress passed an amendment that would save the Kennedy, at least until the Pentagon completes a sweeping study of defense capabilities and plans, due to Congress in February. Warner inserted similar language in his committee's version of the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill, which awaits action by the full Senate.

Attempts to overturn Pentagon budget decisions are not new to Capitol Hill. In the early 1990s, Congress thwarted attempts by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to terminate the V-22 Osprey aircraft program, which is still in the Pentagon budget.

A former Pentagon procurement official said the trend will intensify as budget belts tighten in fiscal 2007 and beyond, and lawmakers maneuver to save existing programs that bring money and jobs to their districts.

"We haven't had a big problem in the last few years because we've been basically living in a rich man's world," the former official said. "As fiscal constraints begin to take place . . . we're going to see what DoD wants to do in shifting to 21st century conflict and what Congress wants to do in keep production lines" open.

But one senior member of the House Armed Services Committee viewed the budget environment differently, concluding that lawmakers will have a more difficult time saving popular projects.

"It's going to be tougher this year because of a push to find offsets for the Gulf and Katrina," said House Armed Services Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.

But Bartlett, whose committee oversees Navy programs, also said any across-the-board cuts to shipbuilding would be "intolerable."

As soon as late November, Pentagon leaders are expected to write a sweeping "program budget decision," a document that will detail which accounts the Pentagon wants to raid over the next five years.

Analysts said the budget decisions will rival those outlined in a now-infamous December 2004 document, known as PBD 753 by the military and defense industry. That document proposed $30 billion in cuts across all services and defense agencies over six years.

"It's going to be a big one like the 753 was," said Gordon Adams, former OMB associate director of national security programs. "What used to be a bleeder is rapidly becoming a gusher. We're hitting the main artery and it's springing out."

But another former Pentagon official said he expects talks of cutting $15 billion in one year are unrealistic. Procurement and research and development accounts are the low-hanging fruit, with personnel and operations and maintenance budgets virtually immune to large-scale cuts.

"This is all coming out of one place," the official said. "It would be very, very difficult to take $15 billion."

Even PBD 753 -- considered one of the most comprehensive attempts to whack the Defense budget -- cut only $6 billion from planned fiscal 2006 budgets, pushing most cuts off to the later years.

"There's a certain amount of Washington monumenting in it," Adams said. Pentagon officials are "going to cut a bunch of stuff we know Congress is going to put back in."