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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 6KB | 127 lines

<text> <title> Formulating Defense Goals for the 1990s: The Challenges </title> <article> <hdr> CRS Review, April-May 1992 Formulating Defense Goals for the 1990s: The Challenges for Congress </hdr> <body> By Stephen Daggett, specialist in national defense with the CRS Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division. Institutional and partisan differences between Congress and the Administration profoundly influence debate over defense policy, but compromise is also common. Congress has, moreover, attempted to develop means of linking perspectives on long-term strategy to action on particular defense budget issues. The revolutionary changes in world affairs over the past three years demand a fundamental reassessment of U.S. national security policy. Congress's role in this process has been a matter of considerable controversy. Some question whether Congress can overcome parochial interests and adjust defense programs to declining budgets; another issue is whether Congress is able to focus adequately on broad, long-term policy questions rather than on narrow, short-term budget matters. Some would focus the same questions on the Administration. The Institutional Roots of Political Discord In recent years Congress and the executive branch have been consistently at odds over a number of defense policy issues that reflect both institutional differences between the two branches and partisan differences that accompany a divided government. Some of the issues in which these differences appear include: -- Budget priorities and the search for a peace dividend--The 1990 budget compromise only temporarily settled debate over trade-offs between defense spending, domestic priorities and taxes. Congress annually adjusts its budget priorities, while defense planners often complain about a lack of stability in congressionally approved budgets. -- Weapons modernization--Congress, influenced in part by concerns about the impact of budget cuts on local constituencies, has often rejected Administration proposals to eliminate major ongoing weapon programs. Many legislators have preferred to keep current programs alive while slowing down development of new weapons. -- The active-reserve force mix--Congress has been reluctant to accept Administration plans to reduce the size of less expensive, politically popular National Guard and reserve forces in proportion to cuts in active duty forces. -- Base closures and overseas troop deployments--Faced with large numbers of military base closures at home, Congress has voted to withdraw more forces from abroad than the Administration proposes, preferring, in effect, to close bases overseas. Differences over these and other issues have led to an occasionally testy exchange between the Administration and some Members of Congress. Defense Secretary Cheney, for example, has repeatedly criticized the Congress for cutting the overall defense budget while protecting favored programs. The Defense Department has proposed rescinding funding for almost all of the projects that Congress added to the FY92 defense budget--an obvious means of needling Congress about what it calls pork barrel politics. The picture is not all one of discord, however. While institutional and political differences may make agreement on many defense issues very difficult, a number of developments reflect equally strong institutional pressures on both Members of Congress and the Administration to find common solutions. In 1988 and again in 1991, for example, Congress approved base closure and realignment decisions endorsed by a bipartisan base closure commission. Two more rounds of base closures are planned, one in 1993 and another in 1995 (i.e., non-election years). Budget pressures and shared assessments have, in time, brought agreement on most weapon termination decisions. In the wake of fundamental changes in international affairs, Congress and the Administration have recently reached agreement on strategic nuclear weapon issues that were major matters of contention throughout the 1980s. Organizing To Address Long-Term Issues A broader set of issues concerns whether Congress is organizationally capable of soundly addressing issues of defense strategy. In the mid-1980s reports by the Packard Commission, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the Senate Armed Services Committee staff all concluded that the congressional budget process and the organization of defense-related committees encouraged a focus on short-term issues and individual budget line items at the expense of broader, long-term policy issues. Whatever the merit of these arguments, Congress has moved in recent years to develop mechanisms to help it consider questions of policy. Among other things, the Senate Armed Services Committee reorganized its subcommittee structure in the late 1980s to reflect defense missions, while the House Armed Services Committee created a defense policy panel designed to address broad issues. Moreover, the Congress has mandated changes in the executive branch designed to make the premises underlying defense policy more visible. Laws now require the President to submit an annual report on national security strategy, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) are required to provide a net assessment of the U.S. defense posture. Perhaps more important, changes mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Act gave the JCS Chairman increased responsibility for developing fiscally realistic long-term budget plans. Congressional hearings now focus heavily on longer-term perspectives. Collectively these mechanisms may enable Congress to consider broad defense policy alternatives more effectively than ever before. </body> </article> </text>