House committee forms contract reform panel
Members will review a recently introduced Senate bill designed to curb the cost of weapons programs, but might end up developing their own proposals.
The House Armed Services Committee has created a seven-member bipartisan panel to take a stab at reforming the Pentagon's weapons-buying process, Rep. John McHugh of New York, the committee's top Republican, said in an interview Thursday.
Problems with defense weapons development and procurement contracts have been receiving top-level attention, most recently from President Obama, who announced Wednesday that he wants to change the way the government -- the Defense Department and military services, in particular -- does business to save as much as $40 billion annually.
Obama's remarks came on the heels of the introduction of legislation by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and ranking member John McCain, R-Ariz., that aims to rein in the ever-growing costs of the military's weapons programs.
"The chairman [Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo.,] and I discussed it over the last several days and he and I are fully in agreement that we want to be positive role players in this and our committee wants to be actively engaged," McHugh said.
McHugh, who took over as the committee's ranking member in January, said members of the new panel will review the Senate bill, but may devise their own list of reforms.
"Our objective ... is to come up with some suggestions that we could work on together on both sides of the aisle and hopefully with the Senate to affect some real reform and hopefully make some progress," McHugh said.
The panel has not been given any time constraints, but McHugh acknowledged that there will be efforts to enact the reforms this year.
"We don't want to be left at the gate, so there is some urgency," McHugh said. "But at the moment, as we start I think both the chairman and I are concerned about quality of product rather than quickness."
During the wide-ranging interview, McHugh said the Pentagon's fiscal 2010 budget request, the details of which will not be available until April, will be his top priority this year.
McHugh said he is particularly concerned about providing adequate equipment for the additional 17,000 U.S. troops deploying to Afghanistan.
The Bush administration went to war in Iraq "on the cheap and we've got to do everything we can to make sure we don't repeat those kinds of mistakes," McHugh said. "You can't just throw forces at this. It has to be a very holistic approach. Those enablers and those support platforms are critical to the success and safety of our troops."
McHugh, who has been to the White House twice in the last two weeks, said he believes Obama has "every intention" of providing adequate resources to the deployed forces.
Meanwhile, McHugh said Republicans have been "encouraged" that Obama's decisions on national security issues have been made in a "very productive way." He cited, in particular, the president's announcement last week that he would pull combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010 but that the schedule could change if security there deteriorates.
McHugh also applauded Obama's decision to retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as well as the president's interest in getting information from military commanders before making major decisions.
"The process by which you make a controversial decision can oftentimes be as important, if not more so, than the decision itself," McHugh said. "So this president has started off in this area of defense on a pretty good foot, from our perspective."
Still, there will almost certainly be disagreements over the details of the Pentagon's fiscal 2010 budget request, particularly as Gates and others warn that difficult decisions will be made on funding for some of the military's most expensive weapons programs.
McHugh signaled he would be opposed to scaling back ballistic missile defense, including efforts to cut funds for radar and missile launchers in Eastern Europe.
"I'm not sure how we would explain to the American people if, in the not-too-distant future, we or our allies ... suffer a strike from that kind of threat because we didn't make the investments necessary now to ensure those programs matured and are up and running," McHugh said.