President Clinton will ask Congress for more than $300 billion for defense in his fiscal 2001 budget, enabling him to declare in this election year that he wants $13 billion more than the Republican-controlled Congress provided last year, according to knowledgeable sources. Clinton's request will include about $5 billion to pay for U.S. military operations in Kosovo and East Timor, along with fresh billions for Energy Department warheads.
These proposed increases, which have been anticipated on Capitol Hill for weeks, will set off an intense struggle over defense spending that will dare both Democrats and Republicans to outdo each other.
For now, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and other Republican leaders have been looking beyond dollar figures to make theirs appear the stronger party on defense. Better health care for past and present military personnel is one new issue that Republicans will try to seize in the coming months, officials in the Pentagon and Congress confirmed.
But Administration officials, seeking to win the next round in the continuing "can you top this" defense spending game, disclosed to National Journal News Service that Clinton's new budget will also call for improvements to existing military health care programs. They said this would not be the hugely expensive overhaul envisioned by GOP leaders, who are weighing the inclusion of retirement-age veterans in the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program. Such a giant step for retired veterans could cost as much as $25 billion over the next five-year budget cycle, Pentagon officials warned.
For lawmakers eager to increase defense spending beyond the President's already-generous budget, finding enough money to satisfy their demands will prove difficult, even in this era of surpluses. Congressional leaders from both parties have pledged not to tap the Social Security trust fund to buy more guns. But the non-Social Security surplus looks as if it will be much larger than anticipated, causing advocates of guns, butter, and tax cuts to lick their chops.
Having vowed to improve the quality of military life with higher pay and better health care and housing, the White House, Pentagon, and Congress also enter the new year publicly committed to keeping the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps ready to fight and well-equipped with new weapons.
Right now, Pentagon leaders are struggling to find places to impose the 0.38 percent across-the-board cut Congress ordered for the current fiscal year. Congress exempted military pay and other personnel accounts, where a dollar cut shows up immediately as a dollar saved. The next best place to cut for quick savings is the operations and maintenance (O&M) accounts. In this area, ship and plane overhauls can be postponed, flying and steaming hours reduced, and purchases of spare parts delayed. But cutting O&M reduces readiness, the condition that Congress and the President have been promising to improve.
Congress has cut O&M, nonetheless, drawing steady fire from Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin, ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Obey points to a glaring discrepancy between congressional rhetoric and performance-and is armed to level the same charge in the upcoming session.
Easier than preserving O&M funds has been boosting the amounts for weapons procurement, according to Pentagon officials, who disclosed an increase from $54 billion to slightly over $60 billion in the budget Clinton will present to Congress in February.
The President is also expected to ask for about $2 billion in emergency funds during this fiscal year for U.S. military operations in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Such emergency spending does not count against the budget caps, which Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M., last year unsuccessfully sought to increase.
While Clinton can accurately claim his fiscal 2001 defense budget will be significantly higher than the budget Congress passed last year, it would essentially match the proposal he offered this time last year for fiscal 2001, not counting the so-called emergency spending. The Pentagon's share, then and now, of the $300-plus billion is about $290 billion, with most of the rest slated for Energy Department warhead programs.
While dancing a political minuet, lawmakers this year will have some serious discussions about whether, given the demonstrated strains of one regional conflict (in Kosovo), it makes sense to cling to the "two MRC" strategy of expecting the armed forces to fight two major regional contingencies almost simultaneously. This year's how-much-is-enough debate will kick off during hearings of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Republican leaders are geared up to charge that U.S. forces are not large enough to carry out the two-war strategy.
Other major defense issues to be debated this year include:
National missile defense. The question here is how much, how soon. Clinton must decide this summer whether the technology for stopping a bullet with a bullet has progressed to the point that the nation should actually deploy a homeland defense or continue experimenting. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen wants the U.S. to deploy a thin missile defense, while preserving as many of the arms control agreements with the Russians as possible.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, will be among the Republicans pressing hard for deployment. According to the Pentagon, Alaska will be designated the first missile defense site if the system is indeed deployed.
Military readiness. As was the case in 1999, Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees will decry the declining readiness of the armed forces at hearings and ask senior military officers if they could use more money than Clinton gave them. The top brass will almost certainly say yes, fueling an attempt to increase readiness accounts, such as personnel and maintenance.
Aircraft. The futures of the Air Force F-22 fighter, C-130J and C-17 transports, and Joint Strike Fighter will be reviewed. Lockheed Martin Corp. has been desperate to obtain orders for its C-130J transport; it has even warned that if orders are not forthcoming, the company will have to raise the price on the F-22 to offset the cost of running two government-owned aircraft plants-in Marietta, Ga., and Fort Worth, Texas.
In crafting its new budget, the Pentagon responded by committing to buy 24 C-130Js, starting with four planes in fiscal 2001. Pentagon leaders contend that this is not a Lockheed bailout, but a step that the country should take for its own good to keep the production line going. If past is prologue, Congress this year will try to go the Pentagon one better on the C-130J buy. Congress is unlikely to do anything drastic on the F-22, as it did last year in denying money to start production, preferring to wait until 2001, when the performance and cost picture will be clearer. Boeing Co., builder of the C-17, pressed successfully last year to boost the total authorized buy of the transport from 120 to 180 planes, despite Administration opposition. Lott is suddenly interested in the issue, and sources said the Air Force plans to base the additional 60 C-17s in his home state.
The question hanging over the Joint Strike Fighter is whether there will be enough money to bring it into production, given the drain of the F-22, the Navy F/A-18 E and F fighter-bomber, and the Marine V-22 tilt-rotor troop transport.
Army mobility. The issue will be how to make the 21st-century Army lighter, with new vehicles purchased on a budget that its leaders say is inadequate. Army officials have been grumbling that they did not get a big enough slice of the Pentagon budget pie to finance the plan of Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, to restructure the 21st-century Army, by, among other measures, abandoning tracked vehicles in favor of wheeled ones.
Navy struggle. The three navies within the main one-surface, submarine, and aircraft-will continue to fight over the limited amount of research and procurement funds. Clinton is expected to needle the Republicans and eliminate the Navy's money crunch by slowing down the LHD-8 helicopter carrier that Lott accelerated last year to help his home-state shipyard, Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Miss.
Submariners gearing up for the 2001 budget debate have declared that they cannot eavesdrop on all the global hotspots that the theater commanders want covered unless they are allowed to have more than the 50 nuclear-powered attack subs specified in the Quadrennial Defense Review. Aviators will continue to buy the F/A-18 E and F fighter-bomber, while trying to figure out a way to duplicate the electronic jamming ability of its creaking fleet of EA-6B Prowlers.
Marines. The Corps is expected to continue to emphasize readiness to fight over comfort items, such as new trucks and better housing, while husbanding hardware dollars for its prized V-22 tilt-rotor troop transport aircraft.
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