[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 74 (Thursday, May 26, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E959]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             A CALL FOR TRANSPARENCY IN THE DEFENSE BUDGET

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JACK KINGSTON

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 26, 2011

  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record.

                 [From Forbes Magazine, Mar. 28, 2011]

                    What's the Real Defense Budget?

                          (By Mallory Factor)

       The new Congress won the election by promising to cut 
     spending, and unsurprisingly the defense budget is on the 
     table for the first time in more than a decade.
       Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently announced $78 
     billion in defense spending cuts over the next five years, 
     including reductions in troop levels for the Army and Marine 
     Corps. These types of cuts suggest that the military is 
     working to become leaner and more efficient. Still, many 
     Americans and congressmen are calling for deeper cuts.
       Not counting the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 
     the Defense budget is expected to be $553 billion in 2012, up 
     from $549 billion in 2011. That outlay currently represents 
     19% of the entire federal budget and over 50% of U.S. 
     discretionary spending; cutting it would go a long way toward 
     reining in government spending. But before further slicing 
     the military budget, Congress must reconsider the military's 
     mission and what activities it should undertake.
       The purpose of a large standing army is to provide for our 
     national defense. In essence, the defense budget is an 
     insurance policy that protects the U.S. against threats from 
     other nations and groups. But in recent years a growing 
     percentage of that budget has been spent on activities that 
     don't involve traditional national defense. These include 
     nation-building, policing foreign nations, humanitarian 
     missions and ferrying executive- and legislative-branch 
     leaders and their attendants around the globe. While these 
     activities may be tangentially related to our standing in the 
     world, they do not enhance our war-fighting capabilities; 
     rather they relate more to the success of our foreign policy 
     than to our national defense.
       This increase in nondefense missions has been accompanied 
     by a dramatic shift from war-fighting to nation-building. The 
     official White House website now describes the function of 
     the Department of Defense as to ``protect national interests 
     through war-fighting, providing humanitarian aid and 
     performing peacekeeping and disaster relief services.'' Is 
     war-fighting just one among the many functions we want our 
     military to perform?
       Rightly or wrongly, we give our military these various 
     assignments because we don't want to pay someone else to do 
     them, and other government entities currently can't. Yet just 
     because our military can do these jobs doesn't mean that it 
     should. Indeed, these assignments shift focus away from the 
     military's core missions: keeping America safe and winning 
     wars.
        Right now it is difficult for Congress to determine how 
     much money is spent on protecting the U.S. The ``military'' 
     budget gives an exaggerated impression of the cost of our 
     national defense. When Congress adds burdens to the military, 
     direct costs like fuel, food and relief supplies may be 
     calculated and expressed in the budget.
       But these items are just a small part of these missions, 
     and the larger costs get buried. These hidden costs include 
     recruiting and training extra troops, purchasing and 
     servicing additional equipment, additional layers of 
     bureaucracy, and maintaining and enlarging bases, none of 
     which are separated out in the budget as relating to 
     nondefense missions.
       The military's nondefense activities may or may not be 
     warranted, but their total costs must be transparent. If 
     Congress does not consider these costs separately, 
     traditional defense missions and essential equipment upgrades 
     will be crowded out.
       America is a compassionate nation and would surely engage 
     in humanitarian activities even if their true costs were 
     known. But why charge these costs to the defense budget and 
     then hide them? Only by demanding that the military budget be 
     limited to legitimate defense activities can Americans know 
     how many dollars we are actually devoting to our national 
     security.
       Some military leaders have privately estimated that if 
     these nondefense-related activities were eliminated or given 
     a separate budget, defense spending could be substantially 
     reduced and at the same time the military's war-fighting 
     capabilities increased. Given this uncertainty, before any 
     additional cuts are made to military spending, Congress must 
     demand transparency with respect to the different roles of 
     our military.

                          ____________________