Next President will face fight over slicing military pie

The next President, no matter who he is, will have to referee a big fight among the armed services over the division of the Pentagon's money pie.

Army leaders will battle hard for a bigger slice to finance the promised "transformation" from a heavy and slow force to a lighter, more lethal one. Army Secretary Louis Caldera says that his service cannot all by itself come up with the $70 billion the transformation will cost over the next decade.

His message is that the new President should take a fresh look at the armed services to determine which of them gets how much-and why.

In asking Congress for $291 billion in new appropriations for the coming fiscal year, Commander in Chief Clinton stuck to the traditional percentages: The Army is slated to get $70.6 billion, 24 percent of the total; the Navy and Marine Corps, $91.7 billion, 31.5 percent; the Air Force, $85.3 billion, 29 percent. The rest is earmarked for assorted defense agencies.

The Navy and Air Force will argue for bigger shares, too.