Democrats in Congress are beginning to push back against plans to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps, signaling that they will protect the sophisticated weapons systems that constituents and contractors value in the upcoming debate over resources.
The call for smaller personnel numbers by senior Defense appropriators and authorizers comes at a time when the Defense budget faces a crisis, with rising obligations to pay for new weapons systems colliding with the mounting cost of maintaining an all-volunteer force.
The tension between funding people or weapons programs feeds into the larger defense community discussion over whether to invest limited resources in preparing for equipment-centric conventional conflicts or the counterinsurgency wars that the U.S. military is now fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And while both presidential candidates currently support the expansion of the Army and Marine Corps, their views on its wisdom differ, joining its fate to the upcoming election.
John P. Murtha , D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said that plans to increase by 2013 the end strength of the Army and Marine Corps by 65,000 and 27,000 troops, respectively, must be scaled back to pay for rebuilding the military after seven years of war and buying weapons for the future.
"[The Defense Department] is going to have to cut personnel in order to pay for procurement. . . . I don't know that they are going to be able to keep growing the Army," said Murtha, adding, "Personnel costs are out of control."
Murtha's comments contradict not only the current plans to increase the size of the ground force, which his committee has consistently funded, but also a drive by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to push the Pentagon away from pricey and unproven technology programs toward more "low-intensity" capabilities.
"Support for conventional modernization programs is deeply embedded in our budget, in our bureaucracy, in the defense industry, and in Congress," Gates said in a Sept. 29 speech at the National Defense University. "My fundamental concern is that there is not commensurate institutional support - including in the Pentagon - for the capabilities needed to win the wars we are in, and of the kinds of missions we are most likely to undertake in the future."
Across the Great Divide
Gates and Murtha stand on opposite sides of a growing divide in the defense community, as leaders and planners struggle to chart a course for a military that faces rising costs in a budget-constrained environment.
In an opinion piece that was published the day after Gates' speech, Murtha wrote he was disappointed Gates wanted to focus on wars against insurgents and militias as opposed to preparing for future conventional conflicts.
"This lack of strategic foresight has left our armed forces in a degraded state of readiness, has left our military facilities in disrepair, and has left many defense acquisition programs broken or badly damaged," wrote Murtha.
In an interview, Sen. Daniel K. Akaka , D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee, agreed that more focus must be placed on shoring up facilities, gear, and training for the existing soldiers, rather than expanding their ranks.
"We need to strengthen our military forces, not by numbers, but by ability, through training and equipment and technology," said Akaka. "In this 21st century, we'll slim down personnel, we'll improve their readiness, we'll have better equipment."
Gordon Adams, the former head of national security budgeting in the Clinton White House, said that increasing budget pressures overall are forcing Congress into the conflict between the cost of growing the force and the cost of buying the next generation of conventional equipment.
"The Pentagon is seriously and understandably divided on this subject. It's very hard to break the mold of business-as-usual, but Gates thinks it's absolutely necessary," said Adams.
Compounding these concerns is the prospect of an end to supplemental budgeting, which now accounts for a significant portion of Defense spending, as well as rising deficits exacerbated by the pending $700 billion bailout package.
"What you've got is a train wreck," said Adams. "What Murtha is reflecting is the point of view that says, ‘In that train wreck, I'm going for bolstering the capabilities on the hardware side. That's what we're going to support.' "
Size Matters to Candidates
Congressional efforts to reduce the size of the armed forces to fund procurement and infrastructure would face staunch opposition in an administration run by Republican nominee Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., who has led the wartime effort to increase the number of U.S. ground forces. Indeed, McCain advocates increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps by an additional 150,000 troops above the current plan.
"I believe our military is overstretched and underresourced," McCain said in written answers to questions submitted by CQ. "I propose we pay for it with budgeted spending."
Whit Peters, an Obama adviser who formerly served as secretary of the Air Force, said that McCain had not offered any concrete plan to pay for the extra forces.
Obama's public position is to support the current end-strength increase, but his advisers are aware of the untenable pressures placed on the Defense budget by personnel and health care costs.
"I don't know that it's set in stone," said Peters, referring to Obama's support of the increase. "A strategic review might suggest that you don't need to make all those adds."
Congressional Republicans argue that the nation's security needs during wartime and its moral obligation to attract and honor combat soldiers require that both priorities be met financially.
"We need to increase the top line to take some of that pressure off that's currently causing the argument between procurement and personnel accounts," said John M. McHugh of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee.
He sees any effort to roll back plans to increase the size of ground forces as a dangerous repetition of ill-advised personnel cuts made in the 1990s.
"What we've learned from Iraq is that you can't grow end-strength overnight. . . . The next war probably won't provide us that luxury," McHugh said.
Personnel Costs Skyrocket
Defense experts agree that the Defense budget crisis is real and personnel costs are a major source of concern.
The plan to increase the number of U.S. ground forces alone will cost $108 billion, with a recurring cost of $14 billion every year following, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Health costs also are increasing steeply. CBO projects that military health care spending will rise from $39 billion in 2008 to $69 billion by 2025. It could rise to $80 billion when unbudgeted costs are taken into account.
The administration has been trying to rein in personnel costs, but bipartisan coalitions in Congress have repeatedly blunted its efforts.
For example, the recently passed fiscal 2009 defense appropriations bill grants the military a 3.9 percent pay raise, half a percentage point above President Bush's request, and rejects the administration's attempts to save another $1.2 billion next year by allowing the military's Tricare health care system to increase fees and co-pays.
Since 2001, the Defense budget has doubled from just over $304 billion in that fiscal year to $607 billion in fiscal 2008, including supplemental emergency war spending.
But Pentagon budget projections anticipate that budget authority will level off in the coming years and actually be less in 2013 than it was last year, although many dispute those assumptions as unrealistic.
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