Cooper Renews Call for Defense Flexibility

Press Release

Last week, U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper spoke at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. The hearing allowed Members to question Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and discuss the FY15 budget request from the Department of Defense (DOD).

In his remarks at the hearing, Cooper said DOD should get discretion when applying cuts from sequestration.

"Why don't we untie the hands of our own Pentagon, so that you can be all that you can be, so that you can be as effective as possible?" Cooper said.

Under sequestration, DOD faces over $450 billion in cuts over 10 years. Currently, DOD must apply the cuts evenly to most programs, projects, and activities. But last year, Cooper introduced the Defense Flexibility Act, which would allow DOD to manage sequestration cuts responsibly and lessen the impact on national security.

Cooper is the Ranking Member of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. The full exchange is below.

Rep. Cooper: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, to the Secretary, to the General, and Mr. Hale, we will miss you.

I hope this committee will not blame the Pentagon for obeying the law, because Congress made up the budget, and all of us would like it to be larger, more flexible, but this committee so far hasn't shown it is willing to do more than to blame the Administration for budget cuts that Congress has passed.

At last year's markup, we didn't even use the real budget numbers. We used the sequestration free numbers, the imaginary numbers, the fantasy numbers.

It is almost like magical thinking. So I hope that this year, we will be more realistic and join with the Pentagon in trying to make the hard decisions that need to be made so that we can have a maximum warfighting capability on whatever budget Congress comes up with.

Let me remind my colleagues, we could have a larger budget if we had the courage to vote for it. We could find the savings in other places. We could have additional revenues, but that is what is lacking is congressional courage.

So let's not blame the witnesses. They are doing the best they can under very difficult circumstances.

One of my colleagues asked questions about BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] earlier, the extent to which the Pentagon had flexibility to make base closing decisions on its own. BRAC is one of the most visible areas in which we in Congress have tied the Pentagon's hands because there is surplus capacity in our defense establishment. Some of the Pentagon officials have been urging there would be reductions for years, and yet, in some cases, we even prevent the study of such savings. That is truly amazing.

So not only can we have whatever budgets Congress is willing, brave enough to pass, we can offer more flexibility to the Pentagon so that you can make maximum effective use of the dollars that you do have. And so often, for parochial interests, this committee refuses to allow you that freedom. That is wrong.

So would the witnesses be kind enough to give me an estimate, a rough estimate of the overall surplus capability that the Pentagon now has that could possibly be downsized, reduced appropriately, taken off our hands by a BRAC type process?

Secretary Hagel: We can provide that, Congressman, and I appreciate your comments, and we will provide it. And Mr. Chairman, we would be very happy to provide it.

Secretary Hale: I can give them to you.

Secretary Hagel: We have got a bottom line number.

Rep. Cooper: A bottom line number would be great from Mr. Hale, his valedictory comment.

Secretary Hagel: I think you are going to want probably some sense of how we arrived at that, too, which we will provide.

Secretary Hale: So we can't put it in for BRAC, but if we go back to the studies that were done just before the last round, we knew we had about 25 percent infrastructure that didn't get eliminated in the last round of BRAC. It is probably higher now. But I agree with the Secretary; we will give you a better number.

Rep. Cooper: I have heard the 25 percent number for years. That is a lot of surplus capacity. And just because it is located in someone's state or congressional district doesn't mean that should be immune from a sensible process of strengthening America's defenses. I have heard from Defense contractors, as most of my colleagues have, that it is not so much the cuts they are worried about, it is the lack of flexibility in implementing the budget.

So why don't we untie the hands of our own Pentagon, so that you can be all that you can be, so that you can be as effective as possible? That is really the responsibility of this committee and of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. And we all can do better if we claim to be proponents of strong national defense, of allowing you the tools and the flexibility to have a strong national defense. We should not be the obstacle on this committee to having the Pentagon be capable of maximum effectiveness.

So there are a number of issues that we could get into. I am on the subcommittee that does strategic forces. Let me remind my colleagues that just to maintain our nuclear establishment, the triad, for example, that is so beloved, that is a $355 billion obligation in the coming years according to CBO; $355 billion, just for what is considered an actually relatively small element of our Pentagon's finances.

So we in Congress need to be preparing for those obligations to be met and fulfilled and possibly even exceeded. But this Congress so far does not have the ambition to do the job that I think most folks in our Nation want to see this Congress do. So if you want to blame anybody, all this committee needs to do is look in the mirror.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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