Monday’s announcement by Secretary of Defense Bob Gates that he will recommend closing Norfolk’s Joint Forces Command has brought bipartisan criticism from the Virginia delegation. Both Senators Webb and Warner have roundly condemned the move, and Governor McDonnell will be headlining a joint press conference Tuesday with Congressmen Glenn Nye, Randy Forbes, Rob Wittman and Bobby Scott to add their voices to the criticism. While I recognize the damage this will do to the Norfolk area, it’s difficult for those of us who have been pushing for spending cuts in government to criticize this move. If we are going to be serious about shrinking government and reducing the deficit, painful choices will have to be made, and this is one of them.
According to the Post, JFCOM employs almost 5,000 people with an annual payroll of over $200 million. It also controls over 1 million square feet of office space in Norfolk – likely costing at least another $50 million or so per year, although I have yet to see solid figures on exactly how much this move is designed to save. Regardless of how high the number is, it is clear that if we are going to get the deficit under control, it is going to have to require spending cuts across a variety of areas of the federal government, including the Defense Department. I know defense cuts are not popular, but it’s hard for anyone to believe that they aren’t necessary, and it’s even harder in this economy to justify not trimming areas that are underperforming, as a variety of analysts in the stories I’ve linked to have said JFCOM has been.
If we are going to get serious about cutting the federal deficit, we can’t cry when those cuts hurt us at home. Virginia has one of the largest percentages of federal employees in the country, much of them in uniform. Any major cuts to the federal workforce – especially in the defense arena – are likely to hit us harder. And while I don’t want to see any of my fellow Virginians out of a job in this economy, this is one situation where the good of the entire country has to outweigh the damage to the Commonwealth.
We Republicans should be careful in criticizing these cuts – especially our Congressional officials. I can understand why the Governor will be critical – he has to. That’s his job. But Congressmen Wittman and Forbes should be more circumspect in their criticism. Gates is merely doing what we’ve been demanding of this Administration for a while – identify places we can cut to reduce overall spending and help shrink the deficit.
If we complain about these cuts, we look hypocritical on spending – cut the budget, just don’t cut it in Virginia. That’s not the right attitude to have, especially considering that every state is going to have to make sacrifices if we are going to get spending under control. We know we have to take our lumps. Better to take them now and take the lead in fighting the spending than look like hypocrites for demanding cuts but not accepting them if they hit us in our backyards.
Gates’ move is a good start and if we’re going to be serious about fiscal conservatism, we should take our medicine and not complain.
Brian, with all due respect I think you may be missing the broader point. There are plenty of other places to cut aside from our men and women in uniform. Obama and the Congress have so far steadfastly refused to cut frivolous or otherwise unjustified spending. Rather, they aim at military spending, which is one of the few areas of government that probably doesn’t need significant cuts right now.
I don’t disagree that there are efficiencies that can be gained through certain military consolidations or through a reduction in the bloated general officer corps (another of Gates’ recommendations), but why is it that when conservatives ask Obama to shrink the government, the only solution his administration can come up with is to shrink our important national defense? Why is it that the only solution is to take aim at an area (Hampton Roads) that is already greatly suffering from the bad economy?
I think the better response to this is for conservatives to come up with a list of other programs that are better suited to be cut from the budget.
NPB, with this Administration, we have to take whatever cost savings we can get. In addition to the cuts at JFCOM, they’re also proposing getting defense contractors significantly and cut other areas as well.
At this point, I think it’s clear there have to be some defense cuts. These cuts make the most sense – JFCOM isn’t a combat command and no one will be put in harms way with these cuts.
As for Hampton Roads, I understand the area is hurting. But we’re all hurting because of these deficits. In the long term it will be best for all of us if we can get this spending under control.
On a completely random note, the 3rd Congressional District that represents Hampton Roads was the bluest in the state in 2008, giving Obama 75% of the vote – even more than Jum Moran’s district did. Go figure.
Virginia is going to hurt a lot more when Hampton Roads has 6,000 more workers receiving unemployment. Unemployment in Norfolk is already at 9.8%.
I strongly disagree with the notion that we should take whatever cuts we can get, if those cuts fundamentally do not make sense. Some of the cuts do make sense, but the JFCOM cut is very damaging.
Also, the 3rd congressional district only represents part of Hampton Roads.
“Brian, with all due respect I think you may be missing the broader point. There are plenty of other places to cut aside from our men and women in uniform.”
NPB, I think you may be missing the broader point. Any serious discussion of returning to fiscal sanity must involve every item in the budget. Including Defense.
Also, our men and women in uniform are not going to be cut. But the number of contractors must be. As Sec. Gates said, “I’m not satisfied with the progress made to reduce our over reliance on contractors.” To call it merely “over reliance” is an understatement. The number of contractors performing tasks that can and should be performed by uniformed personnel is nothing short of scandalous. And the taxpayers are getting royally screwed by it.
The greatest problem with this situation is that it doesn’t provide us with the best possible national defense. That is followed closely by the fact that it is tremendously more expensive than having military personnel perform these tasks as was done with great success in the past.
We need to spend what is necessary to provide for an adequate defense. But we currently account for 54% of all military spending on the planet. We spend more than all the other countries in the world combined. And over the past decade we have averaged 7% annual increases (adjusted for inflation) in defense spending. That is simply not sustainable. Or rational.
Just throwing money at the Defense Department doesn’t automatically buy us a better national defense. Perhaps we should all listen once again to Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex. It is as timely as ever.
These cuts DO hurt Virginia. But Brian, I agree with you that its hard for conservatives who have argued against increased public investment to boost the sagging economy — including money allocated to state and local governments — to argue that we should continue certain defense program because of their benefits as JOBs programs.
Our military budget is obviously more than what’s needed to get the job done, particularly with the mission in Iraq winding down.
What Brian said. In fact, I’d expect deeper cuts that effect all States. As the SecDef said, in the long run this may help VA. The money saved by the reduction and reapportioning of funds could very well include additional job opportunities for VA in other areas.
I am a Gates supporter. So was Bush and so is Obama.
As a retired senior military officer with two tours in the Pentagon, I can tell you that Secretary Gates is right on the mark. If you didn’t listen to his press conference, he made it clear that he is not reducing the overall Defense budget.
Not Paul Blart and Dan,
He is proposing to reduce the bloated headquarters overhead and reinvest the savings in modernization. Which is better for Hampton Roads, 6,000 paper-pushers in an office building (the majority of whom are retired military working as contractors) or new Navy shipbuilding contracts at Newport News? This is not a cut in the Defense budget. It is reallocating scarce resources to where they are needed.
It is important to note that closing JFCOM is not the only headquarters reduction that Gates is ordering. He has ordered hiring freezes at all major headquarters activities, the Pentagon included, for the next three years. He has ordered the immediate elimination of 50 senior general, admiral, and senior executive service civilian positions, a move that in my opinion in long overdue. Rank inflation has been a problem in the military services since the end of World War II, but since the end of the Cold War and after 9-11 it has streaked out of control. We now have 2- and 3-star flag officers in positions that would have been filled by colonels in the 1960s. In the civilian ranks, the grade inflation is at least twice as bad.
The politicians need to shut up and sit down. Stop the election year pandering and posturing. They can’t pretend that they are “supporting the troops in the field.” This has nothing to do with our warfighting forces. If anything, they will be more effective without the over-supervision that they are currently getting from redundant, layered bureaucracies.
HisRoc, I recognize that this won’t result in an immediate cost savings, but what it will do is take the pressure off the constant need for increased budgets at the Pentagon. I would love to start seeing some flat budgets with no increases.
And, as has been noted elsewhere, it’s entirely possible that the Virginia jobs lost will be made up elsewhere in Virginia if the money is reallocated.
Once again, HisRoc is right!
The DOD has been an inefficient jobs program for high cost contractors that undermine the uniformed services (see Iraq) for too long.
Damn. If TP agrees with me, then I’m going to have to re-think my entire position.
Seriously, Tom, be careful with the “high cost contractors” assertions. I believe that your background in is Federal HR. If so, you know as well as I do that contractors are considerably more cost effective than civil service. Secretary Gates’ point is that as we have increased the headquarters missions and reporting requirements, we have become increasingly reliant on contractor employees to handle the workload. If I recall his press conference correctly, he stated that in OSD alone there are over 600 contractor employees working full time to process reports required from subordinate commands by either Congress or OSD itself. Get rid of the bureaucratic overhead and you can reduce your contractor requirements. But you are not going to replace them with government people. Notice that he has frozen headquarters staff levels for the next three years and suspended the in-sourcing initiative indefinitely except for the Acquisition workforce.
HisRoc: I think the contractors that bother people are the paid shooters. That’s not just wrong, it’s un-American. Wasn’t his use of mercanaries one of our gripes with George III?
Steve,
That is a larger issue than the one Gates is addressing. He wants to reduce the contractors in the major command headquarters.
The problem with the paid shooters is that they are hired not by the Defense Department, but by civilian agencies, primarily the State Department. That is because DoD cannot afford the force structure to provide military security forces for everywhere DoS wants to have an embassy or mission. I personally subscribe to the theory that if your embassy security detail of a dozen Marines can’t secure the mission, then State is too far out in Indian country where diplomats don’t belong. Deployed operational forces routinely have a State Department liaison with them. If you are in hostile territory, then that all the diplomatic presence you need.
Did you all see the news today?! Yet another pay out to the teachers unions! When Obama has abolished DED, and stopped giving payouts to public employee unions, and a hundred other silly programs, then you can begin to talk about DOD cuts.
Democrats ALWAYS do this, cut defensive while expanding silly social programs and pay offs to the unions!
I totally disagree with you on this one Brian.
LL,
I think that both Brian and I totally agree with you that the State Aid bill is nothing less than buying public sector union support for Democrats in an election cycle where they are almost certain to lose their majority in the House. There is an article in Roll Call today that points out that every Democrat in a close race, as well as two Republicans in heavy Democratic districts, voted for this abomination.
However, this Gates initiative has nothing to do with reducing the Defense budget one dime. He is simply seeking to spend our Defense dollars more wisely on warfighting capability instead of bureaucracy.
I am a career military professional and currently a defense industry consultant. Believe me when I tell you that this is good for our military forces.
His Roc:
As a defense industry contractor, you should know that defense contractors frequently are paid more that their civil service counterparts, even when the relative fringe benefits are inccluded.
As a former HR professional (and former army manpower management specialist), I do know that many studies on contracting-out are rigged to justify the cost and used
to avoid the statutory/agency litations on FTE.
Otherwise, even a stopped clock is right twice a day!
Tom,
No, actually the studies on in-sourcing that OMB has conducted are the ones that are rigged. A contractor is paid an hourly rate that may or may not include benefits. Usually it does not include anything other than medical insurance and sick leave, it rarely includes vacation and never includes retirement. And, contractors are at-will employees. They can be terminated at any time without cause if there is a budget shortfall, change of mission, etc.
Civil service employees’ costs are fully loaded, to include vacation and retirement at age 55. They cannot be terminated at will without cause and some people maintain that they can’t be terminated even with cause. When I was in the Pentagon, we joked that we should rename Missile Defense “Civil Service,” because we can’t fire it and can’t make it work. Additionally, the government bears the burden of recruiting, training and certifying (where necessary) civil service employees. Contractor employees must come job ready, with the vendor bearing the expense of recruiting and training.
Finally, civil service employees typically are in positions that are over-graded. When the job is outsourced, the labor category assigned to it is rarely if ever equivalent to the former civil service grade and step.
HisRoc:
I haven’t seen any OMB studies in 23 years, but the ones I did see in the Nixon Administration for domestic agencies were rigged against federal employment and ensuing investigations disclosed that fact. The DoD then played a big part in rigging DOD studies to help justify outsourcing federal work. I just happened to work on the Hill in 1969-1970 on a subcommittee investigating some of those early studies.
My oldest son works as a senior contract employee for a civilian agency and he has told me that if he were to take an equivalent level position in the civil service (GS-15) he would have to take a heavy pay cut (even including civil service retirement). I know that he has turned down several offers of SES jobs.
Certainly many civil service employees positions are overgraded as are many contractor positions (in order to attract civil service people or other contract-employed people with special skills). This has been true especially since the 1960s as the government has added so many scientific and engineering positions.
As to federal employees being exempt from firing, this is as an old a myth as the ones that civil service employees do not pay federal taxes or do not pay into their retirement system.
The real truth is that the federal civil service does not fire or take disciplinary action against as many employees as they should. When I was in HR and in staff management postions, I fired and disciplined quite a few civil service emloyees; not as many as I would have liked, but I only had 24 four hours a day to do my job and handle discipline. The fact that many of my first- and second- line supervisors — several of whom I fired — were ineffective managers was a principal problem.