Bush Defense funding decision under fire

From CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush held firm Friday to his plan to conduct a top-to-bottom review of Pentagon spending practices before asking Congress for any new funds for the military. That position has put the new administration at odds with many in Congress as well as the military brass.

"We need an immediate supplemental appropriation -- right now," Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, told CNN.

Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the money is needed now for "flying hours, training, for combined joint exercises, for backlog and real estate maintenance, for family housing.

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The U.S. military

"All of these are necessary right now, otherwise a bunch of the efforts of the military will be shut down," he warned.

But two senior administration officials said Bush would keep to his campaign commitment and await recommendations from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before embracing any major new military spending. The officials added one caveat: They said Bush might be persuaded to seek some supplemental funds if convinced by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that there is an emergency requiring immediate attention.

But they said the review should be completed relatively quickly, and characterized some of the debate over military spending as a test by both Congress and the military to see how determined Bush would be in holding to his campaign promises.

Bush promised to seek a $4.5 billion increase in the Pentagon's $309 billion budget -- $1 billion of that for a military pay raise and other quality of life improvements. Skelton said that in his view, an additional $12 billion is needed this year.

Said Skelton: "...$4.5 billion just won't do it."

But the officials said Bush and Rumsfeld are determined to squeeze savings out of Pentagon programs they view as bloated or unnecessary before committing to going above Bush's campaign budget proposal. Still, one of the officials said, "it is our expectation the secretary will seek a higher figure and we will of course take a look at it."

Bush's actions are causing some concern in Congress and the Pentagon, but they are consistent with what he advocated repeatedly during the campaign.

In September 1999, in a campaign speech at the Citadel, Bush said he would order a comprehensive review with an eye on eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy and outdated, unnecessary or redundant programs and weapons systems.

"I intend to force new thinking and hard choices," he said.

Bush also said he wanted to skip a generation of weapons acquisition, a posture that has put the new president on a collision course with leading members of Congress who long have directed military appropriations to favored projects, sometimes against the wishes of the military.

"We will modernize some existing weapons and equipment, necessary for current tasks," Bush said in the Citadel speech. "But our relative peace allows us to do this selectively. The real goal is to move beyond marginal improvements to replace existing programs with new technologies and strategies ... to use this window of opportunity to skip a generation of technology."

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U.S. Department of Defense
Joint Chiefs of Staff
House Armed Services Committee
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld

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