Generals Push Back On Robert Gates' Budget Cutting
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has spent a good portion of the past two years going up against an entrenched web of military bureaucrats and defense lobbyists to try to restore rationality to the defense budget.
He's battled against obsolete military hardware, pledged to make cuts to the civilian bureaucracy, and ordered the Pentagon to shed $100 billion in overhead. Now, as Ginger Thompson and Thom Shanker report in the New York Times, Gates has put "the military's sacrosanct corps of generals and admirals" in his crosshairs, by "ordering his staff to cut at least 50 positions, and making clear that he would be happier if they cut more." And it doesn't stop there:
Pentagon officials said the measures were aimed at more than a number. Mr. Gates said he wanted to flatten a bureaucracy that had experienced significant "brass creep," swelling to "cumbersome and top-heavy proportions." He complained, for example, that a request to send a dog-handling team to Afghanistan goes through no fewer than five four-star headquarters.
Beyond that, Pentagon officials said, Mr. Gates wanted to push back against a culture of entitlement that had allowed some senior officers to pad their lifestyles as well as their commands.
Gates warned 'em: "No sacred cows." But, as the Times points out, the critters laying up in the yard are more of the canine variety:
Salaries and benefits, however, are the least of it. The biggest costs are created by the general's staffs -- including security details, senior advisers, communications teams, schedulers and personal aides. Mr. Harrison said the military's highest-ranking generals and admirals -- 40 four-star and 146 three-stars -- each had salaries, benefits and staffs whose cumulative annual costs easily exceed $1 million.
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