President Clinton on Monday proposed a $252.6 billion Defense Department budget for fiscal 1999 that proposes funding for new weapons systems, a modest pay raise for service members and two additional rounds of base closures.
The budget includes $48.7 billion for weapons procurement in 1999, projecting $60 billion a year in procurement spending beginning in 2001. The budget includes funding for the Air Force's new F-22 Raptor; orders for seven V-22 Ospreys, the Marine Corps' tilt-rotor aircraft; a new fleet of medium trucks for the Army; and a new attack submarine, three Aegis destroyers and an amphibious assault ship for the Navy. To pay for increased weapons spending, the Pentagon is pushing the services and Defense agencies to downsize, streamline, and force support functions to compete against private companies for DoD business.
"We are going to put up 150,000-200,000 positions for competition," Defense Secretary William Cohen said Monday. "About 50 percent of the time, the public facilities will win and 50 percent will go to the private sector. But in any event, it usually results in about 20 percent savings."
In 1999, 41,000 positions will be competed. The Clinton budget says outsourcing and privatization of Defense infrastructure is one of the administration's management priorities, specifically targeting jobs at the Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service and the Defense Health Program.
As laid out in the Defense Reform Initiative, DoD plans to eliminate 80,000 civilian jobs over the next five years. Since 1993, DoD has cut its civilian workforce by about 201,000 positions, the administration said. Active-duty military would be cut by about 60,000 over the next five years.
Secretary Cohen is also calling for two additional rounds of base closures, one in 2001 and one in 2005. Cohen pushed his plan with the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week, asking for their support when he takes up the base closure issue with Congress.
"Excess real estate creates an incredible drain on the bottom line," Cohen said. "We have far fewer submarines, but the pier space supporting them has not fallen accordingly. We have far fewer aircraft, but we have not seen a corresponding decrease in air bases. This gap between force structure and infrastructure represents billions of dollars going to bases we don't need, the very same billions of dollars we need to maintain readiness and modernize our forces."
The budget proposes a 3.1 percent pay increase for service members in 1999, followed by a 3 percent raise in each of the four following years.
Additional DoD goals include:
- Recruiting 191,300 new service members.
- Reducing supply inventory by $12 billion by 2000 and disposing of $2.2 billion in excess National Defense Stockpile inventories and $3 billion in government personal property.
- Privatizing 30,000 housing units by 2000.
- Reducing and delaying procurement of the Joint Strike Fighter, F-22, and F/A-18E/F.
- Providing $4 billion for missile defense programs in 1999, including the National Missile Defense program.
- Spending $883 million on counter-drug efforts and $3.9 billion on anti-terrorism and force protection.
- Shifting oversight of the Defense Commissary Agency from the Pentagon to the services.
- Increasing training for the DoD acquisition workforce.
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