Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990 TAG: 9004060469
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The department also proposed reducing its oversight of defense contractors as a cost-saving measure and called on Congress to give the Pentagon more leeway in managing its budget.
The proposals were contained in a pair of reports to Congress that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said were aimed at improving Pentagon management, limiting wasteful spending and improving relations between the department and Congress.
Donald Atwood, the deputy defense secretary, said the department needs wider authority to reduce the officer ranks in order to maintain a balanced force as troops are demobilized. The force will shrink by at least 90,000 people over the next two years, he said, and more cuts are likely in the years beyond.
He did not say how many officers might be cut.
Atwood said the personnel proposals, which include incentives for officers to voluntarily leave the service, seek to avoid harming morale in the all-volunteer force.
"These are people who have decided to make the military their career, and we need to have the flexibility to let them leave with honor, with dignity and with some kind of a financial benefit," Atwood told a news conference.
The department recently proposed to Congress that enlisted personnel who are forced out of the service be given severance pay. Currently only officers qualify for severance benefits.
Atwood also said the Pentagon was seeking legislative authority to reduce its monitoring of contractors' work. He said this would make the defense acquisition process more like a commercial business and thus more cost effective.
He said current law forces the Pentagon to use more inspectors and auditors of suppliers' work than is necessary to ensure the work is performed properly.
"We almost have to assume there's a dishonest atmosphere out there" among contractors, he said. "We believe that by reducing the degree of inspections and audits that we put on these contractors, we can save money and we feel we'll get better products."
Cheney, speaking at the same news conference, said that while the Pentagon could improve its own management system, Congress was partly to blame for inefficiencies in the department.
In a 41-page policy paper sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday, Cheney decried the "tyranny of the annual budget review" by Congress. He said the six major committees that deliberate on the defense budget every year should dwell more on overall military goals and less on the particulars of individual weapons programs.
Cheney said the congressional budget writers give the Pentagon sometimes contradictory instructions and require too much paperwork to justify budget requests. He recommended that Congress appropriate defense money for two-year periods instead of every year.
Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, gave high marks to Cheney's proposal, saying "this overall thrust will be well received on Capitol Hill."
Nunn said he will join Sen. John Warner, R-Va., ranking GOP member on the Armed Services panel, in presenting Cheney's package as legislation in the Senate.
"I think Secretary Cheney is absolutely correct when he says that what we've got to have is cooperation not confrontation between the Department of Defense and Congress," Nunn told a news conference.
"I also agree and have said things very similar to what he said about Congress' role should be broad policy and not getting into every detail."
Nunn said his committee has done its best on crafting a two-year defense budget but he said "until we get an overall budget by the White House that gives us the second year of numbers other than defense . . . there is no hope of getting a two-year defense budget authorized and appropriated."
Cheney reacted coolly to a proposal Thursday by Republican Sens. William Cohen of Maine and John McCain of Arizona to cut spending on the B-2 stealth bomber and land-based nuclear missiles as part of additional reductions in the 1991 defense budget.
"The budget we've sent up there is the one we think is the right one," he said, adding later that the department might recommend further cuts later this year after the completion of internal reviews of major aircraft programs, including the B-2.
by CNB