MILITARY UPDATE
Rumsfeld officer plan scuttled
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 50, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
By Tom Philpott
It is not often on Capitol Hill, that a freshman legislator with gumption can have the impact of a wily congressional veteran. It happened most recently May 13 when the House Armed Services Committee narrowly derailed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plan to win new, expansive authority over flag and general officer rotations, tour lengths and age limits.
Republican John Kline, four months into his first term representing Minnesota's 2nd District, drew upon 25 years' experience as a Marine Corps officer to attack what he saw as frail logic and an irresponsibly fast pace in Bush administration plans to transform senior officer management.
Fellow Republicans Jo Ann Davis of Virginia and Jim Gibbons of Nevada quietly joined Kline and committee Democrats to support an amendment from Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., that knocked from the 2004 defense bill provisions to overhaul senior officer appointments.
Kline risks a disloyalty rap from the Bush administration. Rumsfeld and staff had hoped swift victory in Iraq would lead to swift enactment of personnel management reforms by a Republican-led Congress. They want to allow the most talented senior officers, active and reserve, to serve longer careers.
At the subcommittee level days earlier, Tauscher's amendment was defeated on a straight partisan vote. The Republican majority had accepted Rumsfeld's call to allow up to 40-year careers; raise retired pay, accordingly, to a new maximum of 100 percent of basic pay; end time-in-service ceilings on flag officers; raise their age ceiling by several years and allow additional age deferments for the secretary of defense; and relax the three-year, in-grade requirement that senior officers must meet to retire at their top rank.
Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., chairman of the Total Force Subcommittee, argued that these proposals were backed by a study from RAND, the respected defense think tank. Only during full committee debate was it revealed that McHugh alone had seen the RAND report.
Kline said he preferred to rely on his own poll of "every colonel and general I know, active and retired," all of whom oppose the administration's provisions. He agreed with Democrats that the package "would do several bad things" to the officer corps including age it unnecessarily, lower morale among younger officers and politicize senior officer appointments to the point that defense secretaries could surround themselves with like-minded officers, shutting out all others.
A Vietnam veteran who served as military aide to Presidents Carter and Reagan, Kline said he didn't fall lockstep behind the administration on officer management "because of my experience in the military. If I can't bring that to bear, why am I here?"
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., committee chairman, opposed the amendment but thanked Kline for his views, noting that they came from a "guy who carried the nuclear football (a briefcase of launch codes) for two presidents."
The Senate Armed Services Committee also refused to adopt the officer management provisions, seeing a loss of Senate prerogatives for re-confirming star-rank nominees for senior posts. The House vote ensures the issue won't be revisited this year in House-Senate conference committee.
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