WASHINGTON -- The question posed by South Carolina Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney in this month's House Budget Committee hearing on Pentagon spending was penetrating and powerful. "As a conservative," Mulvaney asked, "how could I in good conscience go to the taxpayers and say, listen, I want to spend more money on defense when I don't have any clue how the money that we're spending now is being spent?"
Members of both parties in Congress are challenged by this issue more and more, for the exact reasons that Mulvaney and others at the hearing explained.
Last year the Pentagon confessed that it is one of a very few Cabinet-level agencies without a "clean" financial audit opinion. Weighty overhead costs and misaligned strategies persist in the Defense Department as a consequence.
Many organizations wrestle with failing an audit, but the Defense Department lacks the data even to begin one. This shortcoming creates tangles throughout the department, but its core knot is in operations and maintenance.
Always a very opaque account, it has become even more confused over the past 10 years as resources for combat operations have been rolled in with finances for base maintenance, an expert from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office told Mulvaney.
Today it is virtually impossible to make simple judgments such as whether a fuel purchase is for a troop transporter in Kandahar or a lawn mower at Fort Bragg.
Congress, meanwhile, decided in 2009 that the Pentagon needs to get its books in order but that it could wait until 2017. Six years from now, of course, the fiscal crisis either will be over or past the breaking point.
Some major budgetary issues beg for attention even without the technical details of an audit. McKinsey, the gold standard of management consultancies, determined last year that the U.S. requires 84 supporting troops for every 16 in a combat role. All but one of the 30 industrialized countries analyzed are more efficient than this, including major powers such as China and Russia and core allies Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. Tilting this ratio back toward combat-capable forces would be fiscally responsible, managerially savvy and strategically helpful.
Another way to look at the leanness and meanness of our forces is the percentage that contributes to war efforts from the field. Deploying is the essence of military service. But a 2010 study by the Defense Business Board, an advisory body to the defense secretary, found that 40 percent of our active-duty service members have never deployed despite the heavy operational tempo borne by a select few.
The problem isn't contained just within the realms of management and auditing. Fiscal indiscipline has seeped into essential areas of national security policy and strategy. The administration determined as part of its 2010 budget, for instance, that our current fleet of long-range bombers "is performing well" and "will be able to meet the threats expected in the foreseeable future." Then, in the budget submitted this February, it requested a new bomber program likely to cost more than $55 billion to research and procure - as well as funding to cannibalize six bombers from the existing fleet for parts.
Mulvaney has good reason to think he can't defend increased defense spending in light of such profligacy. So, within hours of the budget hearing, he matched deeds to his words by proposing an amendment to freeze the defense appropriation at its current value. The measure stripped $17.2 billion in growth from the draft legislation.
It failed badly in the House, 135 in favor to 290 against. Closer to home, though, things look better. Mulvaney was supported by three fellow South Carolina representatives, Tim Scott, Jeff Duncan and Trey Gowdy, and four North Carolina neighbors: Virginia Foxx, Howard Coble, Sue Myrick and Patrick McHenry. All are Republicans.
These eight soon may look like visionaries. Defense is squarely on the table in debt reduction conversations. President Barack Obama tossed his budget request out April 13 and suggested saving $400 billion from defense over 12 years. That's the low end of the spectrum. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad suggested a plan that would cut $886 billion from the larger suite of national security accounts over a decade. His number is stark but well-grounded in recommendations made by two bipartisan advisory panels, including one co-chaired by North Carolina's Erskine Bowles.
Tougher fiscal discipline at the Pentagon is essential for good governance. Mulvaney and his colleagues from the Carolinas are right that this excess can't be ignored in good conscience. Neglecting the bookkeeping and mismatching strategy with spending are a disservice to the taxpayers who fund our defense enterprise and the service members who depend on its effectiveness.
Matthew Leatherman is with the Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense Project of the Stimson Center in Washington.
