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| July 5, 2001 |
| July 5, 2001 |
A High-Wire Act on FY2002 Defense Budget Timing
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Chief of Research, dsmith@cdi.org
June 27 was suppose to be "B-Day" or Budget Day -- the day when the Pentagon revealed to Congress and the American public the details of the Bush administration's defense budget plan for FY2002.
While more information about the broad categories of defense spending ( personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, research and development) was made public, the normal details about spending on specific weapons programs and how much of the targeted pay raises will go to which service members has yet to emerge.
Two weeks ago (June 21), Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman Carl Levin, during an appearance by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, told the Pentagon chief:
| "[I]t is critically important for the Defense Department to provide the budget documents for your FY2002 budget amendment to Congress by June 27...we will then have three months to mark up the national defense Authorization Bill in committee, get it passed by the Senate, complete conference with the House and send it to the president before the end of the fiscal year. Historically, it has taken us an average of almost five months just to get the bill past the Senate, so doing the entire process in three months will be a monumental task." |
When Mr. Rumsfeld appeared before the committee again on June 28, Sen. Levin's remarks were even more pointed:
| "The men and women of our armed forces have a lot at stake in the FY2002 national defense authorization bill, and every member of this committee is committed to working hard to complete action on this bill before the start of the new fiscal year. To do that the committee needs an actual budget proposal from the Department of Defense. So far we have received but a budget outline. We need details on specific budget line items. We need the justification books explaining these line items. . .And. . .given the extremely compressed schedules . . .that I mentioned, we just have to ask again for all of that information that I have outlined -- specific line items, the justification books and your legislative proposals, the balance of tem, by next week." |
Of course, Congress has often failed to complete action on spending bills before the start of a new fiscal year (October 1). But this year the Bush administration seems to be setting the stage for a high-stakes gamble. Consider:
The high-stakes gamble has to do with timing. To meet Sen. Levin's timetable, the Senate and House each will have to get through subcommittee and committee hearings on the authorization request in the first part of July -- and that's with the first week lost to the Independence Day break. This would leave no more than two weeks for the full chambers to debate, amend, and vote on its version of the legislation before the August recess (which lasts through the Labor Day weekend).
But there is resistance growing among Members of both parties to rushing through the legislative agenda. Mr. Rumsfeld has hinted that he expects certain "directions" determined by his high-level strategy review and the Quadrennial Defense Review (due to Congress by the end of September) will become apparent in August. If so, the Pentagon may be hoping that the inevitable House-Senate conference needed to reconcile the two versions of the bill will add more money to programs or fund new initiatives during their discussions.
The end game here is that the conference report could contain spending the Pentagon wants but was reluctant to seek in the budget request, which has to be debated and voted on by Congress. Possible reasons for holding back might be because such items would have run military spending so high as to cause a backlash or because of anticipated strong opposition to a policy or program. Since conferees generally are pro-defense (a logical assumption given that most conferees would be from the authorizing committees whose members have an interest in defense matters), the defense secretary might believe he has a better chance with this group than with the full Congress of getting controversial items added or changed to fit his vision. While each chamber must vote on and approve the conference report, if time is running down to October 1, there may be greater reluctance, as in similar past situations, to challenge conference committee changes than otherwise might be the case.
The risk, obviously, is that Members will be so unhappy about known policies and priorities (e.g., dropping 33 of 90 B-1 bombers and an expected request for new base closings) they will refuse to give the military a "pass" for FY2002. On its own, that's not likely, but Mr. Rumsfeld may find himself under even heavier fire when the FY2003 defense budget goes to the Hill.
UN Will Hold Conference on Small Arms
Rachel Stohl, Senior Analyst, rstohl@cdi.org
Next week the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects will commence in New York. The two week conference is intended to focus on coordinating international action to deal with the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.
The final document of the Conference is to be a Programme of Action, a political declaration outlining steps that governments can take at the national, regional, and international levels to tackle the global problem of the proliferation and misuse of small arms. The Programme of Action will also include follow-up mechanisms and provisions for implementation. The Programme of Action may also contain: the establishment of regional and international transparency mechanisms, concrete steps to achieve improved implementation and enforcement of arms embargoes, and norms of civilian possession of small arms and light weapons. Many governments and NGOs have argued that a meaningful and forward-looking Programme of Action would raise international standards on the export and use of small arms and light weapons and develop processes to negotiate legally binding norms and measures to stop weapons from winding up in the hands of abusive forces, be they either governments or non-state actors.
To that end, three possible follow-up initiatives have been proposed: a framework convention on international arms transfers that sets out normative export criteria based on states' current obligations under international law; an international agreement that creates laws and procedures that discipline the activities of arms brokers and strengthens national laws to prosecute traffickers who violate these norms; and an international agreement on marking and tracing that develops systems for adequate and reliable marking of arms at manufacture and/or import and record-keeping on arms production, possession and transfer.
The U.S. delegation is led by Ambassador Donald J. McConnell of the State Department. In general, the United States is supportive of the Conference and the Programme of Action. Specifically, the United States is keen to see issues including information sharing, border controls, stockpile security, and surplus weapons destruction included within the Programme. The United States has also noted the need to promote policies of restraint in legal exports, and advances the normative provisions of the OSCE Small Arms Document as a model for export criteria. But the U.S. government has also detailed "redline" issues that if included would prevent the United States from supporting the final document. Among these "redlines" are: limits on the transfer of small arms to non-state actors, controls on domestic sales and manufacture of small arms, and proposals to begin negotiation of any legally-binding agreements. The United States has been extremely vocal on these "redlines," causing much frustration amongst other delegations.
The UN Conference is just one step in a longer term effort to address the proliferation and misuse of small arms. The UN Conference should establish the framework for future action at the international level and encourage individual states and regions to develop initiatives specific to the particular needs of the country or region. Governments are accountable to push the agenda on small arms forward, at the UN Conference and beyond.
NGOs also have a role to play, however. Participants in the Small Arms Working Group (SAWG), an alliance of U.S.-based non-governmental organizations and individuals working together to promote change in U.S. policies on small arms and greater harmony in international controls on the small arms trade, and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a network of more than 320 organizations from 70 countries, whose aim is to curb the proliferation and misuse of small arms, have developed policy options to continue the efforts to counter small arms proliferation. Only if governments and NGOs work together will the Conference be able to creative substantive policies that stop the devastation small arms inflicts on the lives of millions of people, not only in New York, but worldwide as well.
For more information on the Conference preparatory process, see "UN Hosts First Prepcom for 2001 Small Arms Conference," Weekly Defense Monitor, March 9, 2000, "Second Prepcom for 2001 Small Arms Conference Concludes," Weekly Defense Monitor, January 24, 2001, and "Third UN Prepcom for Small Arms Conference Ends With Unresolved Issues," Weekly Defense Monitor, April 5, 2001.
For general information on the conference and conference process, visit the UN's small arms website or the IANSA website.
Budget Chair to Oppose Pentagon Spending Add-ons -- Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Budget Committee, has said that he will oppose any amendments adding funds to the fiscal year 2001 supplemental spending bill when the full Senate considers the legislation next week. The $6.5 billion spending package includes $5.5 billion in additional funds for the Pentagon. Several Senators have indicated that they are considering offering amendments requesting additional funding. Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-MO) is said to be considering a nearly $1.5 billion amendment to provide additional operations and maintenance (O&M) and personnel funding, while Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) is considering adding $204 million for 20 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters for the Army National Guard.
Norway Concerned About Kursk Salvage -- While the Norwegian government has pledged its support for efforts to raise the Russian submarine Kursk, officials have expressed their concerns about the safety of the operation, which is scheduled to start next week. Divers will begin with an inspection of the vessel, and eventually will cut off the forward end of the submarine, which still contains live torpedoes, before lifting the remains of the submarine and its two nuclear reactors to the surface. Last week the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority issued a press release stating their concerns about the short time frame in preparing the lifting operation, which is expected to be completed in mid-September. The Kursk sank last August 12 in the Barents Sea.
Local Leaders Push Texas Alternative to Vieques -- Business leaders in an East Texas town are trying to persuade the U.S. Navy that they've got the answer to the question, "where do we go after Vieques?" The Navy Times is reporting that local officials and business leaders in the town of Kingsville are enthusiastic about the plan, which they feel would boost the local economy, and help insure the future of the region's three existing Navy bases. The proposed facility, known as the U.S. Expeditionary Warfare Center would cover 220,000 acres, more than 200 times larger than Vieques. One obstacle to the plan is the fact that it lies inland of the Pardre Island National Seashore, a 133,000 acre national park and the nation's longest barrier island.
Apache Fleet Grounded -- The U.S. Army grounded roughly three quarters of its fleet of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters due to concerns about the aircraft's tail rotor. The move came as a result of an incident last month involving an Apache operated by the Israeli military, who's tail rotor came apart. Although an official grounding order was not issued by the Army, the service will inspect the tail rotors of Apaches whose blades have more than 1,000 hours on them, or roughly 700 of the service's fleet of 742 helicopters. The Apache fleet was also grounded last December due to tail rotor problems.
Quotation of the Week -- "There's huge institutional resistance to change inside the Department of Defense," Maj. Gen. David Deptula, head of the Air Force's Quadrennial Defense Review, Defense Week, July 2, 2001.
This Week on America's Defense Monitor: "Water, Land, People, Conflict"
Today, the greatest threats facing any nation's security may not be military threats. Increasingly, they are complex issues related to the environment such as population growth, water scarcity, pollution and economic stability.
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