OMB should reassert itself over Pentagon, analysts say

Veterans of budget wars within the Clinton administration and other observers believe the time is ripe for President Obama to let OMB take a tougher approach to vetting the Pentagon's budgets than it did under former President George W. Bush.

Some say the Pentagon has been calling the shots in recent years, especially with Republican and Democratic lawmakers eager to please the military brass and show voters they're strong on defense.

The power play even has allowed the military services to launch direct appeals to Congress to secure funding for prized weapons systems, often bypassing the bean counters at OMB to push for programs that lack the administration's blessing.

David Morrison, who worked on national security matters at OMB under President Clinton, said recently that the lack of budget discipline -- including the services' efforts to "freelance" their unfunded priorities -- has put OMB at a disadvantage.

There has been little interaction between OMB and Capitol Hill on national security matters over the last several years, said Morrison, who until last year served as staff director of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

OMB has been "short-circuited a significant amount of time," he added. "I think it needs to reassert itself -- but it can't be heavy-handed. That never works with the Pentagon."

Morrison suggested better cooperation and coordination between the two agencies, with a common goal of developing sound and comprehensive budget policy.

An OMB official said this week that the agency is considering $524 billion in discretionary spending for defense in fiscal 2010 -- the same amount projected by the Bush administration a year ago and $11.3 billion above this year's appropriation. Some Hill Republicans favor a $584 billion wish list for fiscal 2010 that senior military officials drew up late last year.

House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said this week he wants more discipline in the Defense budget -- including ending supplemental spending and reducing waste in the Pentagon's acquisition accounts. "OMB is the agency in charge of doing that and they need to do that," Ryan said.

Gordon Adams, who handled defense at OMB under Clinton, said he believes OMB had taken a "laissez-faire attitude" toward the Defense and State Departments, in particular, in the last administration.

"The Defense Department and the military need to be reined in and stick to their knitting and do their proper job," Adams said, recounting how the military in recent years assumed much of the nation-building missions once in the State Department's domain.

The State Department, he added, needs to expand "and OMB is going to play a key role in the determination of how that happens."

But one analyst said OMB's role may depend more on external factors than on the will of its leaders.

"OMB's clout will be determined largely by the budget imperatives we face and the strength those realities give to their arguments -- plus the extent to which the president supports those views," argued Robert Kyle, another former OMB official.

Still, OMB's handling of its fiscal 2010 budget negotiations with the Pentagon could go a long way toward defining the relationship.

"If President Obama is ever going to have a chance of getting the Pentagon under control each of those attempts has to be slapped down as they occur," said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate Budget Committee staffer now at the Center for Defense Information.

And, if OMB officials don't pass their first budgetary test, "they don't become real players in the defense budget," Wheeler said.