Bush Bucks Brass

White House Insists President Will Increase Funds For Pay, Housing

(CBS)  President Bush has told the Pentagon that it must complete a review of defense strategy before he will approve an additional $5 billion in funding the Joint Chiefs say the military needs.

The $5 billion would cover unexpected expenses, such as rising fuel costs and maintenance of aging aircraft.

CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports the review the president has demanded will take the Pentagon months to complete.

The chiefs seem to have been caught off guard by Mr. Bush's reluctance to give them the quick infusion of cash they want.

Over and over during last year's campaign, then-candidate Bush and his running mate, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, vowed to rebuild a military they said had fallen into disrepair during the Clinton administration — with the vice president pledging at one August campaign stop that "Help is on the way!"

When the Joint Chiefs met with the new president shortly before he took office, they had expected his cooperation on their most immediate problems.

But by the time they dined privately with him at the White House Tuesday night, they knew their new commander-in-chief would not be so willing to give them what they want.

The president's action was especially stunning to the military brass since such requests had been routinely approved during the Clinton administration.

Republicans on Capitol Hill say the military can't afford to wait.

"I believe that we need to spend some money very quickly," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "to address some of the problems that were identified in the campaign that all of us have known about for years in the area of readiness, spare parts and immediate needs that have nothing to do with long term requirements."

White House aides insist Mr. Bush will make good on his promise to spend $45 billion from the budget surplus over the next 10 years to raise military salaries and improve housing.

"He has sent a signal of fiscal discipline, that there will be no immediate supplemental," said presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer.

The White House said Mr. Bush would seek better pay and housing for U.S. troops in fiscal 2002, but left unclear if that would slightly boost the $310 billion defense budget proposed by the Clinton administration, or merely involve applying those funds differently.

The 2002 financial year begins in October and the $310 billion budget outlined by the former Clinton administration for that year actually represents a $14 billion increase over current U.S. military spending.

The Defense Department, however, had hoped for a 2002 budget of at least $320 billion to help keep up with force operations and maintenance and expensive new arms programs for a military strained by more than a decade of budget cuts after the Cold War.

In 1994, the Clinton administration brought the defense budget down below the $300 billion mark, which every budet since 1983 had exceeded. Some of Mr. Clinton's spending decisions were dictated by the Balanced Budget Amendment, which set specific caps for defense.

Defense spending has inched up in recent years, but the Pentagon says their budget is still a smaller percentage of the federal budget than ever before — less than 15 percent today, compared to nearly 40 percent during the Vietnam War.

However, according to the Center for Defense Information, a private think-tank, America's share of global military spending increased from 30 percent to 33 percent from 1985-1996, even though total worldwide spending on defense dropped from $1.6 trillion to $797 billion in that time.

Critics say that the military's overall budget would be adequate if the money were spent correctly. They say the military is misled by its self-imposed — and some say unwarranted — requirement that it be equipped for simultaneously "fighting and winning two major theater wars."

But a string of incidents in the past year has bolstered claims that the military is suffering from a lack of resources, though Pentagon officials have said military readiness is still at acceptable levels.

In September, a report by the Navy's inspector general found that funding shortages are hurting the combat performance of Naval aviators. Later that month, for the first time in more than a decade, that Navy called a general stand-down after several accidents.

There was also trouble in 2000 with Marine helicopters and Army aircraft. Already this year, there are worries about the safety of Harrier jets, as well as ongoing concern about the Osprey program.