Controls Asked for Weapons Buying : Cheney Says Plan Would Overhaul System, Save $30 Billion

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, acknowledging he has no “quick fix” for streamlining the Pentagon, today proposed a complex plan to overhaul the weapons-buying bureaucracy and tighten controls over purchases.

Cheney predicted that about $30 billion could be saved by the 1993 fiscal year if his “simplified and more efficient” weapons system for acquiring weapons is put in place.

Procurement will account for more than $60 billion of this year’s $305-billion defense budget and involve more than half a million civilian and uniformed employees of the Defense Department.

President Bush requested the management report five months ago as part of a major review spurred by a series of weapons procurement scandals. Defense industry employees and consultants and Pentagon workers have been accused of improperly using confidential information to funnel lucrative contracts to certain manufacturers.

Less Oversight Asked

The report seeks some relief from congressional oversight requests, complaining about the “staggering” number of reports Congress requires from the Defense Department each day.

Some sections of the plan require congressional approval. For instance, the study asks that Congress implement a two-year rather than annual, defense budget and establish select committees in both houses to review and rewrite “the maze of federal procurement laws.”

Many of the ideas included in the package were first proposed in the 1986 Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, also known as the Packard Commission.

The proposals include:

- Establishing an executive panel to make all the major decisions at the Defense Department. The panel would be composed of the department secretary, the deputy secretary, undersecretary, the deputies for procurement and acquisitions, the heads of the various services and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

- Enhancing the powers of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition--dubbed the “acquisition czar.” The undersecretary would have “full authority for major acquisition programs,” which would trim some of the services’ powers.

- Eliminating layers of bureaucracy that Cheney says “have no value” by paring and consolidating overlapping agencies in the acquisition system and, primarily through payroll cuts, save $30 billion over the next four budget years.

The report notes that about 580,000 civilian and military personnel around the world are involved in the procurement process. The report suggests trimming the organizations gradually “by at least 15%” by 1993.

- Establishing a defense contract management agency to consolidate contract administration activities and supervise the contracts after they have been awarded.

- Establishing a corps of career military procurement specialists in each service. - Setting up an ethics council composed of the acquisitions chief and the various service secretaries.