Mr. Hoyer: …On Thursday we’ll do the Department of Defense Appropriation Act. There are, by the way, over 600 amendments filed to that bill. The rule hasn’t been written yet. The rule is not through yet, is it? No. They’re working on the rule now. We will try to deal with perhaps a large number of those en bloc amendment of some type. There are 540 filed by Flake alone.
Q: 540?
Mr. Hoyer: 540 by Mr. Flake.

I didn’t know a single human being could file that many amendments.

[Defense Secretary Robert Gates] bluntly warned Lockheed Martin that he would slice funding for the more modern F-35 jet if the contracting giant lobbied to build more F-22s. Lockheed Martin’s chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, told employees he supported Gates’s call “to put the interests of the United States first — above the interests of agencies, services and contractors.” That left the powerful lobbyists to sit on their hands.

And who makes the F-35?

Usually state delegations voted in lockstep — a predictable consequence of the plane being constructed in nearly every state in the country — but when they didn’t, a Democrat voted to stop funding and a Republican voted to keep it. There are three exceptions there. In Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby voted against the plane and Sen. Jeff Sessions voted for it; both are Republicans. Similarly, in Oklahoma, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) voted against the plane while Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) voted for it. And in New Hampshire. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) voted for the plane but her Republican colleague, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), voted against it.

Defense Sec. Robert Gates (WDCpix) and F-22 Raptors (Air Force photo)

On Monday, an Iraq veteran named John Guardiano took to the right-leaning op-ed page of The Washington Examiner, a free daily paper in the district, to inveigh against the “Secret Defense Budget Tribunals” of Pentagon chief Bob Gates. Guardiano, troubled by the unusual steps taken by Gates to hold the details of his fiscal-2010 budget close to the vest, compared Gates’ efforts to the ill-fated efforts of then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to construct a universal health-care regime in secret that ended in 1994. Needless to say, he disapproved. “Democracy can be messy and untidy, noisy and boisterous,” he wrote, “it can disrupt the work of the ruling class, who think they know better than we the people.” After all, Guardiano reminded, “America is not the Soviet Union or China.”

Guardiano’s bio for the paper quickly noted that his views “do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. military or his employer, a defense contractor.” The paper didn’t see fit to name the contractor.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Still, Guardiano’s op-ed was indicative of two facts that remain salient as Gates is expected to deliver the substance of his long-awaited Pentagon budget to the White House next week. First, defense contractors and their Capitol Hill allies are alarmed at how Gates has shut them out of the the decision-making process about the Pentagon budget as he has publicly warned, in vague terms, about making “hard choices” that will place defense systems and weapons programs beloved by the armed services and their contractors on the chopping block. And second, Gates has adopted a strategy for his budget that presumes that most of the defense industry is an obstacle at best and an adversary at worst.

“Leaks are used by people opposed to the changes being considered,” said one Pentagon official supportive of Gates’ effort. “It’s about opposition [to the budget] mobilizing on outside and stopping that, from certain members of Congress, the [armed services] committees, the news media, what have you.”

Gates has taken extraordinary steps to keep the details of the fiscal 2010 budget to himself. First, he announced that he would withhold the substance of the budget from the Obama administration’s overall budget, delivered in February, and just divulge the overall spending request of $534 billion. ($663.7 billion when counting the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the year, which will be funded through a supplemental budget request later this year.) Then he announced that he would empanel a review to determine what defense systems needed to be scaled back in funding or were no longer relevant for national security. He went so far as to insist that defense officials and military officers consulted by the review sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent them from leaking. “In principle, you’re not supposed to talk about this thing outside of the building, or share it within,” said an official who requested anonymity and who was one of several dozen officials asked to sign the non-disclosure agreement.

The agreement, first disclosed by DefenseNews in February, requires signatories to affirm “I recognize that a significant factor in the successful and proper presentation and completion of the President’s budget is the strict confidentiality that must be observed by all government participants.” That includes all discussions about “planning, programming and budget system documents and databases, and any other information … concerning the Administration’s deliberation of the nature and amounts of the President’s budget for Fiscal Year 2010.” The agreement placed into conflict two values that the Obama administration espoused during last year’s campaign: openness and reform.

The budget effort, according to insiders, had two main phases: first, solicitation of perspectives and advice from a variety of officials and servicemembers; and second, final decision-making by a comparative few officials. While Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Vickers was part of a “small group” of Pentagon officials leading the review, officials influential during the final phase were Gates; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman; and Brad Berkson, director of program analysis and evaluation.

Gates’ allies say that keeping the decision-making process open would have empowered defense contractors to lobby Congress to protect beloved — and expensive — defense programs at a time when the economy is forcing the closure of what Gates has called the “spigot” of defense cash opened by the 9/11 attacks. While the budget still represents an increase over last year’s defense spending, Gates testified to Congress in January about restricting Cold War-era systems or those of uncertain value to irregular conflicts like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. “This budget going to involve very significant shifts and changes from what was done in past,” the Pentagon official said, but declined to characterize how the budget would change.

Defense reformers look at such claims with skepticism. Winslow Wheeler, a three-decade veteran of defense budget fights as a Capitol Hill staffer who now works for the Center for Defense Information, expected the budget to cut “low-hanging fruit” and leave many sacred-cow programs intact. But he said that the secrecy-centric approach to the budget would only delay the inevitable fight when it gets delivered to Congress. “They’re delaying the services running around behind their backs and [asking] Congress to please rescue” favored defense programs. “But it’s not question of if, it’s a question of when that happens. The service representatives — colonels, whomever — will come over to Congress to complain about the decisions — if Gates make some good ones.”

Even in the absence of specific information about the budget, defense lobbyists have wasted little time mobilizing to guard against cuts. In January, Lockheed Martin unveiled a Website called Preserve Raptor Jobs, arguing that the F-22 fighter jet it produces for the Air Force was a jobs engine during trying economic times. A spokesman for Lockheed told TWI last month that the site was merely intended to “provide information” primarily to the jet’s “supplier base,” but lawmakers from F-22-producing states warned Gates against cutting funding for the jet — which costs approximately $143 million per plane, of which there are currently 183 — using talking points that sounded much like text on the site. Similarly, defenders of the Army’s Future Combat Systems program for tech-enabled land warfare — the target of a Government Accountability Office report this week that criticized its “staggering” cost-overruns of $300 million — have argued in recent days that the program is crucial to soldier safety against insurgent attacks, even though it has yet to be deployed in full. The Politico reported this week that Boeing has deployed 100 lobbyists to Washington to push back against potential cuts.

The Pentagon official acknowledged that secrecy over the budget could hardly last forever. Lobbyists “have a sense of where the trajectory is going” in terms of prospective budget cuts,” the official said. “What usually happens is happening. But at least [the secrecy] is something that mitigates it somewhat.”

Wheeler said the ultimate decision when the budget is fully unveiled will be Obama’s. “The president will have to decide if he’s going to fight for his own budget and the decisions that Gates makes, assuming Gates makes good ones,” he said, “or whether to engage in the slippery-slope compromises with Congress. And the everyone-gets-happy route just makes everything worse in terms of an aging, shrinking and less ready to fight” military.

But Obama might have actually taken a significant step today to take on that entrenched apparatus.

Obama today issued a memorandum to the heads of all the executive departments agencies directing them to restrict no-bid contracts; to rein in outsourcing of “inherently governmental activities”; and to, if necessary, cancel wasteful contracts outright. The crucial paragraph, even if it’s written in bureaucratese, particularly calls out the Defense Department:

I hereby direct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in collaboration with the Secretary of Defense, the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Administrator of General Services, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and the heads of such other agencies as the Director of OMB determines to be appropriate, and with the participation of appropriate management councils and program management officials, to develop and issue by July 1, 2009, Government-wide guidance to assist agencies in reviewing, and creating processes for ongoing review of, existing contracts in order to identify contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, or not otherwise likely to meet the agency’s needs, and to formulate appropriate corrective action in a timely manner.  Such corrective action may include modifying or canceling such contracts in a manner and to the extent consistent with applicable laws, regulations, and policy. [My emphasis]

Clearly, this has applications far beyond the Pentagon. But the list of big-ticket defense items that have experienced huge cost overruns is a long one. Future Combat Systems in the Army; the Littoral Combat Ship in the Navy; the Joint Strike Fighter in the Air Force — all of these programs, near and dear to the services, have run massively over budget. If I was a lobbyist for Lockheed or Boeing, I’d be dialing my contacts in the Pentagon and the Hill to figure out what the prospective damage to my company was. And then I’d come up with a strategy to fight this forthcoming Office of Management and Budget review.

Obama went further in remarks at the White House, calling it a “false choice” to say that protecting the country requires acquiescence to Pentagon waste. “In this time of great challenges,” he said, “I recognize the real choice between investments that are designed to keep the American people safe and those that are designed to make a defense contractor rich.” He also lent support to Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and former presidential rival John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) legislation to create new procurement oversight positions at the Pentagon. “The days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over,” Obama said.

This effort hardly seems perfect. One of the people Obama specifically tasked to work with OMB for procurement reform is Bill Lynn, the deputy secretary of defense whose last job was lobbying for defense giant Raytheon. Perhaps Lynn is here because he knows how defense lobbyists work, and can come up with strategies to beat them at their own game. Or perhaps Lynn will find it difficult to overcome his background — and the sure-fire job waiting for him in the defense-lobby sector when he leaves government. And, of course, the defense lobby is one of the most powerful in Washington.

But Obama has now placed defense-contracting reform at the center of his efforts at cutting wasteful spending, and he’s put cutting wasteful spending at the core of his deficit-reduction approach; and both the press and the Republican Party will watch that deficit-reduction approach as a test of his presidency. That line from his YouTube address on Saturday about being ready for a fight with lobbyists over his budget? He might mean it.

…that 95,000 number counts indirect employment at firms for whom the F-22 program is just one of many clients. And it also counts Lockheed assembly workers who are in high demand for other aviation projects. In fact, ending Raptor production today might not result in a single unemployed aerospace worker. …

A year ago the industry was worried about huge labor shortages. Shutting down the Raptor line would see thousands of workers snapped up for active production lines churning out F-16s, F-35s, C-130s and modernized C-5s for Lockheed, not to mention the prospect that industry rivals Boeing and Northrop might lure Lockheed workers for their own active production lines for the F-15, F/A-18 and others.

David doesn’t necessarily think the F-22 should face program cuts — “There are good reason to keep buying F-22s,” he writes — just that the stimulus argument against the cuts is dubious.

On the stimulus question, he’s not wrong. Defense spending indeed stimulates the economy. It’s just curious how all of these old and wheezing defense platforms of dubious/debatable utility to national security are suddenly presented as important parts of economic recovery — and presented outside the context about what other, perhaps-less-expensive measures might be more stimulative. To be fair, Kagan doesn’t advocate for any particular defense program, but that just makes the argument a bit generic and tacked-on.

But all of this proceeds from the incorrect premise that Obama is going to cut defense spending. In fact, as CQ’s Josh Rogin reported yesterday, Obama’s Office of Management and Budget is capping the ceiling on non-war-related spending at eight percent above the fiscal 2009 budget. It’s possible that Obama will ask the Pentagon to rein in its projections for future defense spending. But those are projections and not actual spending. A simple Google search would have spared us Kagan’s column — presuming, that is, it was written in good faith.

Update: I should have noted that Glenn Greenwald hit this before I did.

Late Update: CQ’s numbers were a bit off the first time around, so Josh Rogin’s story is updated. The ceiling OMB placed on the fiscal 2010 defense budget is still $14 billion higher than the fiscal 2009 one.

Testifying before the Senate panel Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said stringent ethics rules are a major reason it is difficult to fill top posts at the Pentagon.

It’s funny because it’s true.

Ironically, Gates was testifying in support of Lynn’s confirmation. In his attempt to defend his colleague, Gates inadvertently indicted his department and the entire defense industry as a morass of crony capitalism.

Let’s assume that ethics regulations are a significant obstacle to obtaining top talent at the Pentagon. Let’s assume it’s hard to find senior public servants who haven’t already cashed in on their expertise in the private sector. What does that say about the system?

The Lynn affair is another illustration of the real-world consequences of an unchecked revolving door and the institutions that treat this kind of back-and-forth between government and industry as the norm.

Here is a guy who is probably highly qualified, but who will take office under a cloud. His efficacy may suffer as a result. In a lot of people’s minds, he’s always going to be the lobbyist from Raytheon. That may not be fair to him, and it’s certainly not fair to the institution he serves.

Tougher institutional controls on the revolving door, such as those Obama tried to impose with his executive order, are part of the solution. Sustained public pressure is also important. It’s  harder for lobbyists to slip quietly back into government now that Jack Abramoff is a household name.

If journalists and watchdog groups keep up the pressure, politically ambitious people will eventually learn that a lobbying background can be a long-term liability, and not just an easy way to make a quick buck.

One thing is clear, ad hoc ethics waivers like the one Obama gave to Lynn, will only exacerbate the problem. Rules can slow the revolving door, but the problem won’t go away until decision-makers impose real career consequences for candidates who rack up conflicts of interest.

Here’s what Gates said in his opening statement. First, “this spring,” he said, he’ll present the defense budget and will “at that time” be able to talk about Obama’s defense priorities — so expect few specifics today about weapons programs or overall defense postures. “New or changing policies will likely advise in the weeks and months ahead.”

Afghanistan: it’s “our greatest military challenge” right now. “A thriving drug trade fueling corruption, a ruthless insurgency” requires international coordination, which so far has been “difficult, to say the least.” There is “no purely military solution in Afghanistan, but it is also clear that we have not had enough troops to provide baseline security.” Gates doesn’t promise a troop increase, interestingly, but rather says a troop increase is being “considered,” as well as a “massive increase” in Afghan security forces. What should the objectives in Afghanistan be? “Above all, an Afghan people who do not provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda,” doesn’t support the Taliban and supports the government. It is “impossible to disaggregate Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Iraq: SOFA calls for Iraqi troops to be out of cities end of June, “all troops” out by 2011 “at the latest.” Gates calls it “a balanced… and important step… a watershed, a firm indication that American military involvement in Iraq is drawing down.” But “there may be hard days ahead for our troops.” Expect to “be involved in Iraq in some level for many years to come” pending the Iraqi government wants some kind of partnership.”

Procurement and Acquisition (Military Contracting): “I ended up punting a number of procurement decisions” in the Bush administration to focus on the wars and “now I’m the receiver.” He blasts “parochial interests” — interesting if he’ll view in the light of his would-be-deputy — but also blasts “vacancies” in key acquisition posts, “where a small set of weapons programs have a repeated set of problems… the list spans the services… While there is no silver bullet, I do believe we can make headway.”

The forthcoming budget “must make hard choices… we must have the courage” across the services. Hmm. “Economies of scale… greater quantities of systems” can perhaps lower costs. “Budget and procurement decisions have become overwhelmingly service-centric,” rather than taking into account overall defense needs and strategies. America at war favors short wars, or plans for future war “but not to wage a protracted war.”

Now Gates really gets going, taking a big overview. We need to “close the yawning gap” between how the Pentagon plans for future wars and wages current ones. “Driven more by the actual concerns of potential adversaries, and less by what is technologically feasible” — Donald Rumsfeld, you are officially dead and buried, career-wise. “The defense spigot that opened on 9/11… is closing.” We “will not be able to do everything, buy everything… now is the time to take action… I will focus on creating a unified defense strategy.” He asks Congress to help him — essentially challenging representatives and Senators to put aside parochial concerns about what defense programs provide jobs in their districts and states and focus on the overall national interest.

Citing recent meetings, the Navy bulletin warns officials that all bets are off and the service’s FY-10 budget plans — known as the program objective memorandum, or POM-10 for short — could soon see big adjustments.

“As you know, our original planning assumption was that the POM-10 we submitted would undergo only minor changes,” the message states. “That may no longer be accurate.”

Well, maybe. At deputy defense secretary-designate Bill Lynn’s confirmation hearing last week, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a former Navy Secretary, upbraided the service for redundant shipbuilding plans, program cost overruns and a lack of overall strategic planning about what sort of fleet the U.S. requires. Lynn, along with comptroller-designate Robert Hale, pledged a thorough review. And all of that falls into line with, as Castelli points out, Secretary Bob Gates’ recent call to better balance the defense community’s irregular warfare needs with its traditional, conventional, big-ticket-item needs. Counterinsurgency advocates and counterinsurgency skeptics alike are waiting to see how that actually cashes out in terms of Pentagon budgeting.

And there lies the prospect for budgeting chicanery. Castelli ends his piece by summarizing that Navy bulletin’s guidance:

Those who work on high-tech information operations, networks, intelligence and space capabilities must advocate for their high-tech programs by tying them to warfighting and using language that warfighters who are not information technology specialists can understand, the bulletin advises.

That sounds a whole lot like the Navy will attempt to redefine its Rumsfeld-era and pre-Rumsfeld era high-tech stuff as irregular-warfare support. In the Rumsfeld Pentagon, defense officials knew to write their budget requests in a way that sounded pleasing to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s amorphous, tech-heavy vision of “transformation.” Now it appears that the services may attempt to justify the same old programs by gussying them up in counterinsurgency-friendly language. (”… the DDG-1000 destroyer contributes to full-spectrum operations, facilitating a whole-of-government approach…” — oh, and look who has a huge piece of the DDG-1000 contract: Raytheon, the company that’s given us Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn. Will the program survive, do you think?)

This is a classic defense budgeting trick, and one I’ll be paying very close attention to when the next budget gets released.