Hagel's Bagels

               The news that Defense Secretary Hagel is following lockstep behind President Obama in recommending a limit on military pay raises, higher fees for health-care benefits and less generous housing allowances to prune billions of dollars from the defense budget must really be sitting well with the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our freedom.

               There is no question that the defense budget is bloated, but not because our troops are getting paid too much.  Some military families, in fact, have so little income they qualify for food stamps.                 There are three areas that could produce enormous savings.  First, we need to close unnecessary bases here and abroad.  The Pentagon is recommending a new round of base closings (BRAC), but it is running into a stone wall in Congress.  Our legislators don’t want to cut anything in their own backyards.  As Representative Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said, “The general sort of bias against BRAC is very strong in the House.  Added to that, it’s an election year.”  God forbid he should be placing the fiscal welfare of this country above the need to protect his sinecure.     

               Second, we need to end contracts to produce weapons systems that don’t meet operational or cost specifications, or that the military doesn’t need or want.  Here are just three examples.  The new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is so poorly built, it is, according to one test report , “…not expected to be survivable in a hostile environment.”  What?  But the Navy still keeps building them at a cost of $813 million each, up from the original estimate of $220 million.

               Next is the M-1 Abrams tank.   The Army has 2,300 of them with another 3,000 in storage.  It doesn’t need any more of them, but we keep building them.  Why?  Because Ohio legislators don’t want to close the plant that builds them.   It would cost 16,000 jobs and affect 882 suppliers.  This is what Congress considers a jobs program.

               Then there’s the C-27J Spartan cargo aircraft.  Every new plane that was built went directly to an Arizona boneyard.  The Air Force didn’t need them, but Congress insisted on spending money it had budgeted for them.  I visited this boneyard a few years ago.  The planes stored there, including the C-27J, are not dead; they can be recalled into service at any time: 4,400 of them with a value of $35 billion.  This taxpayer was very impressed.

               Third, we should pare down the bureaucracy in a Pentagon that is bloated with redundant administrative staff.  There are about 31,000 people working in the Pentagon these days.  You would think that this would be a good place to cut costs.  But these people are so essential that the size of the Pentagon’s vast oversight organizations grew by 15% from 2010 to 2012 according to the Federal Times.

               If Secretary Hagel thinks that reducing military pay and benefits is the way to go, then he should lead the way and cut his first.