Congress and Defense, policy reading

BLUF (bottom line up front): Congress/legislative branch act as oversight to exercise control
over Dept of Defense through the military and budget. They feel they represent the American
public, therefore they should have control everything the military does.

-Congress is a venue in which armies of lobbyists, partisan strategists, and activists clash in
political battles with billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and arguably, vital military
capabilities hanging in the balance. Such are the battles over the future of a major weapons
program (e.g., continued production of the F-22A fighter), far-reaching changes in military
personnel policy (e.g., whether retirees should receive DOD medical care for life), or the closure
of major defense installations
-Congress routinely weighs in on matters that are both less important (at the national level) and
more important (in the view of constituents) by adding to the annual defense funding
legislation hundreds of "member interest" projects, most of them as modest in their impact on
national policy (and on the size of the DOD budget) as they are parochial in their scope
-Defense committees of congress on occasion, addresses significant questions of policy.
- committee initiatives appear to be reasonable efforts to solve problems, and in some cases,
they appear to pay off as intended.
-they develop a more fully rounded assessment in the policymaking process facilitating
judgments about, for example, how often and under what circumstances committee initiative
decisions are made.
- the level of detail at which Congress has tried to control defense policy through its power of
the purse ($$$) has varied historically over time
-consistent emphasis has been made by Congress to use the appropriations bills to regulate the
recurring administrative/financial needs of the Army and Navy.
-until the middle decades of the twentieth century when the Army began to mechanize
(vehicles) on a large scale and the military services began to invest in large numbers of aircraft,
the only major capital investments that afforded Congress leverage on broader issues of
defense policy were coastal fortifications and warships
-When defense budget requests for major investments came along, Congress often weighed in
on the substance of broader defense policy; moreover it is arguable that, in at least some cases,
when Congress did so, it acted on the basis of policy judgments that were deliberate, if
debatable.
-while there are clear examples of efforts by Congress to use its control of $$ to shape the
defense establishment in the first century and a half after adoption of the Constitution, it also is
the case that well into the 20th century there was no consistency in the level of detail at which
Congress controlled appropriations for the War and Navy Departments.
-the authorization legislation governing the Army and Air Force through the decade of the
1950s was the Army and Air Force Authorization and Composition Act of 1950 which set only a
few limits on broad categories of equipment and people in the service.
-the contemporary annual defense authorization bill was a requirement, enacted in 1951, that
the military departments "come into agreement with" the Armed Services committees on most
real estate transactions costing more than $25,000. This provision of law got the two
committees deeply involved in the deployment during the 1950s of a far-flung network of anti-
aircraft missiles and radar systems to defend the country against long-range, nuclear-armed
Soviet bombers.
- the continental air defense issue put the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in the
position of considering the authorization of a large number of new military installations, many
of which had to be near metropolitan areas because of the relatively short range of the surface-
to-air missiles intended to defend the cities.
-the Military Construction Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1960 required prior legislative
authorization for the buying of aircraft, missiles, and naval vessels. However, over the following
three decades, Congress slowly broadened the scope of the requirement until, by the late
1990s the annual defense authorization bill allowed an amount to be appropriated for almost
every account in the DOD budget.
-it is said that the annual defense authorization bills receive their significance from their effect
on defense allowed spending legislation
-members of the House and Senate - including some whose members' states do not have any
major military base or contractor - seek seats on the Armed Services and Appropriations
(allowed spending) committees and invest considerable time and effort in their work.
-the Armed Services committees frequently exercises substantial influence and decision making
over significant aspects of U.S. defense policy, though they do so periodically and reactively- as
one would expect from a legislative body.
- the House and Senate Armed Services Committees exercise power in ways that have little to
nothing to do with enacting legislation, but can publicize executive branch errors/mistakes
through hearings, staff investigations, and congressional delegations
-authorization bills tend to support military/DoD because everyone understands the
importance of security/defense issues
-Congress wants to see/know the operations of any federal agency because they control the
money. the Constitution specifically grants Congress uniquely far-reaching authority concerning
the military establishment, specifically the powers "To raise and support Armies. To provide and
maintain a Navy," [and] "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and
naval Forces." These authorities are frequently cited by the congressional defense committees
as the basis of their authority to review any administration's defense program at a much finer
level than is typical of congressional oversight of other major executive branch agencies.
-Senate Armed Services Committee draws particularly strong leverage from the fact that
promotions for military officers - unlike those for civil servants - require Senate confirmation.
Nominations for promotion to flag and general officer grades are individually scrutinized by the
Senate Armed Services Committee staff
-members of Congress concern themselves with the well-being, morale, and preparedness of
junior enlisted personnel, routinely demonstrating a responsiveness to that group they do not
extend to rank-and-file civilian federal employees. (Congressional investigations)
-It is on relatively technical questions regarding the manning, organization, and equipment of
U.S. forces - issues that typically do not have a partisan aspect - that the defense committees
have their greatest impact as policy initiators
-The greatest value added by the committees to the policy process is their potential to combine
technical know-how with political knowledge: to mediate the relationship between the defense
establishment and the political body it serves, persuasively conveying the special requirements
of the armed services to their legislative colleagues and, conversely, ensuring that the military's
programs are tolerable to the broader society, both financially and socially.
-The defense committees draw on other sources of independent expertise: private, non-
partisan think tanks; certain policy analysis organizations with a clearly partisan orientation;
federally funded research and development corporations; university-based experts; and a
number of small but high-powered centers within the executive branch.
-in order to understand the issues the defense committes have developed tactics that allow
them to exercise on DOD and the services various degrees of leverage that range from
bureaucratic nudges to sweeping assertions of legislative authority over agency operation.
-they hold investigative hearings, legislative reports, investigative reports, they request outside
analysis when they don't understand and want more info and then create ad hoc commissions,
periodic reports, and sometimes create new laws

This reading was painful. Sorry guys but I kind of just gave up there in the end. 😔 see y'all in
the morning

V/R
Mary Drilling
MAJ, PO
(513)305-0410