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Pork, Politics, National Defense— and the Line-Item Veto
Congress is about to give the President a line-item veto on aPpropriations bills. This apparently arcane piece of fiscal leg- ■slation is likely to have a profound effect on U.S. defense. In theory, it allows the President to eliminate the sort of gross pork that now clutters the national budget—including defense. Without such power, a President must either approve or veto an en- hre appropriation bill, accepting whatever is tacked on in the 'ast minutes of congressional sessions or in the conferences called to settle differences between House and Senate versions °f the bill. President Jimmy Carter once vetoed a defense bill to kill a new carrier he did not want, but few Presidents would have taken that sort of chance (the next defense bill might well have been even less satisfactory). A line-item veto allows the Present to eliminate selectively, allowing the rest to become law.
Marines Get Night Targeting System
Line-item vetoes are quite common in state §°vernment: 43 of the 50 state governors have them. It is not altogether clear, however, whether they are effective in eliminat- *ng pork, particularly if the governor is a Member of the same party as the majority °f the state legislature.
The new federal line-item veto is part of a more general attempt to curb spending. A tew weeks before it passed each house, Con- §ress came very close to approving a con- shtutional amendment demanding a balanced budget. Behind such Measures is the belief 'hat federal overspend- ’ng is sapping the U.S. economy; that the government is borrowing money that might otherwise be spent to mod- emize U.S. industry— and thus might make (he country more competitive. This spring’s run on the dollar, which severely cut its value against the Japanese yen and the German mark, is seen by many as a reflection of dissatisfaction with excessive borrowing by the U.S. government—even though many governments run large deficits.
Certainly a reading of the current defense appropriation act shows a good deal of pork, much of it not even clearly related to any form of national defense. In the past, however, powerful congressional committees often have added items to the defense bill which cannot be so easily characterized. For years, the Navy’s budget request had no money for P-3 Orion production; the service argued that there were much more press- lng needs. Congress thought the Navy had dismissed them far too easily and reinserted the P-3s—production continued. It seems clear that many within the navy were quite happy to have these airplanes forced upon them, since Congress also added the money to buy them.
Was this pork? Surely those congressmen in whose districts Orions and their parts were made were happy to help the program stay alive. The committees in the House and Senate, however, had another aim. They did not necessarily agree with the then administration that Orions and their roles could be dispensed with. It was more than a question of jobs; it also was a question of national policy.
The nuclear submarine program is a better-known example of congressional initiative. Much of Admiral Hyman G. Rick- over s success seems to have come from his unique hybrid position, both inside the navy and simultaneously as a civilian in
Marine Corps AH-1W attack helicopter system includes a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) /laser designator- rangefinder with an on-board video cassette recorder.
the Atomic Energy Commission. In the latter role, he was able to influence the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which strongly supported the submarine program. During the late 1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara decided to terminate nuclear attack submarine construction on the grounds that sufficient craft already had been authorized. Congress, prodded by Rickover, thought otherwise, and its view prevailed, Given a presidential line-item veto, McNamara might well have had no need whatever to listen to his congressional critics. No one familiar with his behavior as Secretary is likely to doubt that he would have used this sort of power to press his views against his critics.
It would be difficult to describe the nuclear attack submarine program as an exercise in pork. It was, rather, a case in which very experienced congressmen decided that the President’s defense policy-maker was being short-sighted. Nor was it a matter of a few arrogant congressmen: they had to convince many of their colleagues that their position was reasonable. Congress exercises its will largely by determining the way money
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is spent. That includes adding items when Congress feels that the executive branch has been lax.
By giving the President a line-item veto, Congress has surrendered much of its power. It is possible that presidents will be deterred to some extent by fear that Congress will excise items they want (Congress, after all, has always had a line-item veto over the budget the President proposes.) That will happen only if the same Committee which proposes an item also has power over something the President wants.
In theory, the President’s defense budget expresses the professional judgment of the services, which prepare their budgets and staff them through the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A defender of the line-item veto, then, might argue that its effect will be to reduce congressional meddling. The Defense Department, however, is not a monolithic entity, and disaffected elements within it have used Congress as a court of last resort.
In the past, we have benefited enormously from diversity of views in defense because we face some very diverse defense problems. It is by no means clear that centralized decision making is necessarily best for us. The German General Staff, the epitome of centralized military thinking, did extremely well in fighting the sort of Continental European campaigns it studied in peacetime, but it lost two World Wars because it refused to take into account the potential of overseas powers, particularly the United States. Too, its concentration on the purely military problem of defeating an enemy army blinded it to the attrition problems Germany faced in both wars; the General Staff was uninterested in issues of wartime, as opposed to prewar, industrial and manpower mobilization.
One major argument—unfortunately rejected—at the time of the Goldwater-Nichols Act was that enforced jointness (via the unified commanders-in-chief and the Joint Chiefs of Staff) almost inevitably would concentrate U.S. military interest in a very limited set of cases—fascination with high-technology information warfare, attractive to a civilian administration concerned with cutting costs, demands that low-technology problems—Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia—be virtually ignored.
The narrower the circle of decision-makers, the easier it is to lose sight of unpleasant possibilities and realities. The effect of the line-item veto is to tighten the circle further, beyond the effects of Goldwater-Nichols. Thousands of political science students learn that defense programming should begin with a clear-cut national strategy, which implies force structure. Strategy cannot be clear-cut unless decision-making is clearly concentrated. Until quite recently, the U.S. reality has been quite messy. Policy has never been altogether clear-cut. The United States often has succeeded precisely because of this messiness, which makes allowances for diverse opinions—and for capabilities to deal with the sorts of conditions the central decision-makers have not envisaged. Efficiency is lost, but we also retain capabilities which turn out to be important. The ideal case fails because no central decision-maker has an infallible crystal ball. None of this would be worth pointing out, were it not for the increasing movement toward the sort of decisionmaking that requires a good crystal ball.
The problem becomes acute whenever overall funding is cut drastically. Some may recall an earlier crisis in 1949, when national strategy was shifting to fight the Cold War. An array of new weapons and systems, such as atomic bombs and very long-range bombers, were entering production. The Truman administration wanted to hold the overall budget to what could be supported through a very long Cold War. It also needed funds to buy up stocks of strategic materials, which often came from places the Soviets or their allies might be expected to overrun.
The new U.S. Air Force argued strongly that nuclear deterrence or attack might suffice to deal with the Soviets, and the desired bomber force was quite affordable—provided the other services were gutted. The Air Force seems to have offered the
Army a deal: side with us against the Navy’s carrier program, in return for support for elimination of the Marine Corps. The cry, which may seem familiar now, was to eliminate costly duplication: three separate air arms (Air Force, Navy, Marines), two separate armies (Army and Marine Corps).
The Air Force won its case within the administration and the new heavy aircraft carrier then under construction, the United States, was canceled. Operating naval forces were slashed, though fortunately the ships went into reserve rather than to the breakers.
The Marines fared better. They took their case preemptively to Congress, which guaranteed that a strong Corps would be maintained. The Navy’s attempt to take the case to Congress (the “revolt of the admirals”) was far less successful, though it did raise questions about the Air Force’s new strategy.
Well, was it pork? A cynic might imagine that the fight in Congress was really about military jobs, that perhaps the country was much better off without the big new carrier, and that the Marines really did duplicate the Army’s role. By the fall of 1950, it was clear that the Navy and Marine Corps had been right. The Air Force’s threat of nuclear blitzkrieg had not prevented the Soviets from backing North Korea in a war. The Marines, and the amphibious capability they represented, had proved vital at Inchon. Carriers had made much of the difference between survival and defeat in the early part of the war.
The larger lesson is that it is most unlikely that any one authority will always be right. The Constitution wisely sets the executive branch against Congress, with an independent judiciary to mediate the permanent conflict. Congress sometimes senses that an argument that has died inside the executive branch (in our case, in the Defense Department, or in the President s office itself) still has merit. To the extent that Congress surrenders its ability to enforce its ideas on the President and the executive branch, the country loses valuable insurance against stupidity.
It is sobering to look at the effect of an unrestrained executive on national defense. Consider the United Kingdom: once a Prime Minister is in office, Parliament has very little say. except perhaps to evict him. Policy is set inside the executive, with little or no public debate. Individual members may denounce the executives policy choices, but there is no equivalent to the congressional committee system before which those choices must be justified.
Much therefore depends on how well the executive can make policy. In defense matters in this century, the record has not been a happy one. In 1965, a new British carrier was canceled partly because the Royal Air Force (RAF) was able, without challenge, to move key islands (including the continent of Australia) several hundred miles to demonstrate that land-based aircraft could defend British interests in the Far East.
In 1936, the British spent heavily on bombers rather than fighter defense. Fortunately, the British Treasury demanded that more money go to fighters—and the British citizenry was rather lucky that a civilian arm of government had managed to out- maneuver the very service—the RAF—which in theory should have set air priorities. Unfortunately, no one was able to ask just how effective the bombers were likely to be; it turned out that the RAF had neglected to learn just how to navigate to its targets. Without technical expertise at its command, the Treasury had to assume that the RAF was buying the appropriate equipment for its chosen strategy.
The U.S. system is imperfect, but in the past it has offered some means of questioning the assumptions the administration of the day may make. The line-item veto does not eliminate Congress from the system, but it goes a long way toward cutting congressional power. It seems unlikely that its proponents, concerned mainly with cutting government waste, appreciate just how much they have so willingly surrendered.
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Proceedings / June 1995