January 27, 2011

Gates Says Budget Impasse Threatens Readiness

By THOM SHANKER

OTTAWA — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, escalating his budget battle with Congress, has issued an unusually passionate warning that the impasse over approving this year’s federal spending package threatens the military’s readiness to fight.
“I have a crisis on my doorstep,” Mr. Gates said, making the case that stopgap spending bills in place since Sept. 30 could leave the Pentagon $23 billion short of money needed for operations, training and maintenance.
“Frankly, that’s how you hollow out a military, even in wartime,” he said. “This has to do with the security of the country.”
Mr. Gates was aboard an Air Force jet en route to meetings here with his Canadian counterpart when he made his remarks to reporters late Wednesday. A former C.I.A. director who rarely shows emotion in public, Mr. Gates was visibly agitated as he read from a full page of handwritten notes to urge Congress to pass a 2011 spending bill before opening its arguments on his proposals for 2012 and beyond.
The defense secretary also revealed one steep cut in Pentagon spending in the coming budget for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that may help persuade Congress to approve its regular budget. He said the request for supplementary spending to pay for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq for 2012 will be about $39 billion less than this year, dropping to $120 billion from $159 billion.
While many on Capitol Hill already are criticizing his proposals to cancel weapons programs and trim the Defense Department bureaucracy in 2012 and beyond, Mr. Gates dismissed those criticisms as idle rhetoric unless members of Congress break the stalemate and pass this year’s spending plan. Otherwise, he said, the military could face disruptive, ad hoc cuts to meet the temporary spending cap.
There is no end in sight to partisan fights between Democrats and Republicans over federal spending, which have prevented Congress from passing a 2011 federal budget four months into the fiscal year. The stalemate could worsen as Republicans in Congress seem divided among themselves, between those who seek to protect defense spending and those who want everything on the table, including the military’s budget.
The current temporary spending bill — the fourth so-called continuing resolution since Sept. 30 — expires in early March, and Congressional leaders say it is possible the government will operate on these stopgap measures indefinitely.
That prospect has so frustrated Mr. Gates that he took the unusual step of summoning correspondents for a detailed session on the risks of cutting Pentagon spending ad hoc through temporary spending measures.
Mr. Gates cited members of Congress who oppose the $78 billion in cuts he has proposed over the next five years, including cancelling weapons programs and trimming the size of the Army and Marine Corps; critics say the plan will weaken national security.
But Mr. Gates said those members should be among the first to end the temporary spending plans and approve a formal budget. He said that continuing to operate at lower spending levels under the stopgap budgets would force the Pentagon to reduce flying hours for combat pilots, steaming days for warships and time on practice ranges for troops at home exactly as the number of forces deployed to the Middle East are drawing down and need to return home for retraining.
The Pentagon request for its 2011 base budget was $549 billion. The continuing resolution has set the level at about $526 billion.
The official defense appropriations bill that would be considered in the next omnibus is $538 billion.
As Mr. Gates, who has said he intends to retire this year, presses Congress to approve this year’s spending plan, he is also facing a two-pronged attack on his budget plans for future years, both from those who say he is not cutting enough and from those who want to restore programs, including weapons systems that they favor but that Mr. Gates says are not necessary.
“I think it’s our challenge to persuade both sides that where we’ve come out is about the right place,” Mr. Gates said. “And if they end up having some better ideas than we do, we’ll take a look at them. I think we need as much as we’ve asked for, but I don’t think we need anymore.”
Mr. Gates said his budget proposals and efficiency measures should stand up over time, even after his departure, because the Defense Department’s top civilian and military leaders are in agreement over the need to trim the bureaucracy to protect money for the fighting force. There have been notable instances over recent decades when the armed services lobbied quietly with allies in Congress to undo a defense secretary’s cuts.
“There is a unity of view between the military service and the military leadership and the civilian leadership,” Mr. Gates said.
And he warned members of Congress not to think of him as a lame duck defense secretary who won’t be serving long enough to see the budget debate through to its conclusion. “I’m going to be around for a number of months,” Mr. Gates said.