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Murtha: U.S. defense spending will dip

U.S. defense spending will decrease, the chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Pentagon’s budget predicted on Wednesday.

“If we use history as a guide, defense spending will come under increased pressure in the coming years,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. “Now, what I’m saying is there’s gonna be less defense spending,” he told a gathering of military officials and defense analysts at the Center for American Progress.

The military’s share of the budget will be restricted by an array of economic problems, including recession, pent-up demand for spending in infrastructure, health care, education and the retirement of the baby boom generation, said Murtha, who is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

He likened the coming cuts to the 31 percent spending reduction in the 1970s after the Vietnam War and the 36 percent cut during the 1990s after the end of the Cold War.

However, Murtha stopped short of predicting a percentage decrease over the next several years. “But I do know that defense spending is going to be under severe pressure,” he said.

The defense budget passed for 2009 is $611 billion, but the military is expected to ask for an additional $80 billion to keep fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009.

Despite coming spending cuts, the U.S. must maintain a military that’s able to fight conventional wars as well as irregular war, Murtha said.

But there are numerous signs that the U.S. military is in trouble.

The Army, in particular, is in bad shape after six years of war in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan.

“In 2001, all active Army divisions were rated at the highest readiness levels,” Murtha said. Today, only 10 percent of the Army’s ground combat units in the U.S. are fully mission-capable, he added.

The Army and Marine Corps are increasing in size, but to attract and retain recruits in wartime, they are spending $2 billion on bonuses, Murtha said. And the percentage of recruits who have graduated from high school has slipped from 94 percent to 82 percent.

After repeated deployments to the wars, Army suicide rates are the highest in decades and divorce rates are the highest in 15 years, he said.

Instead of hundreds of applicants for admission to U.S. military academies, Murtha said he received only 18 in 2008.

Murtha said the military is now spending $153 billion a year on personnel, and that cuts into spending on new weapons. “You can’t increase personnel and increase procurement at the same time,” he said.

And the services are doing a poor job of managing their procurement programs.

It took the Air Force 19 years to develop the F-22 stealth fighter, and will take 15 years to develop the Joint Strike fighter. That compares to five years for the late 1970s F-15, Murtha said.

And the Air Force has wasted six years and $6.1 billion in two botched procurement attempts to begin replacing its aging refueling tankers, “and we didn’t get a tanker,” he said. “It will take at least another two years before we begin to start procurement of a replacement tanker,” Murtha said.

The Navy must buy 10 ships a year if it hopes to increase its fleet to 313 ships, but last year requested only four ships, he said. And it changed its mind twice on whether it wanted to keep buying DDG 1000 destroyers. “That makes it so difficult for us to come up with a stable program,” he said.

“We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to fix the acquisition system,” Murtha said.

The 35-year House veteran offered some suggestions for trimming defense spending:

• Stop spending $2 billion a year on recruiting and retention bonuses. “As we draw down [from Iraq] we ought to be able to get rid of the bonuses.

• Buy in greater quantity. That would lend stability to the defense industry, possibly reducing prices.

• Slow personnel increases in the Army and Marine Corps — “because that’s where the real money is.”

• Reform the acquisition process.