Clinton Proposes $25 Billion More for the Military

President Clinton, seeking to blunt a Republican attack on the politically explosive issue of U.S. military readiness, Thursday proposed spending $25 billion more over the next six years to bolster military preparedness and modernization of weapons.

The proposal is Clinton’s first major policy initiative since the GOP victory in the Nov. 8 elections. It would finance more training and equipment maintenance, grant new cost-of-living pay increases, upgrade military housing and expand child-care services.

The President also announced that he will ask Congress in January for an extra $2.3 billion for the current year’s defense budget to help reimburse the military for peacekeeping and rescue operations, which it says has siphoned off money needed to maintain readiness.

Although Administration officials insisted that the increases had been in the works for months, the timing of the announcement--which Clinton made at a Rose Garden ceremony flanked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff--clearly was intended as a preemptive strike against the GOP.

Restoring many of the defense cuts that Clinton had made earlier was Item No. 6 in the 10-point “Contract With America” that Republicans used to help seize control of the House in last month’s election. The GOP had been planning a push for more defense spending in 1995.

Only two weeks ago, the Pentagon was forced into the embarrassing admission that five key Army divisions already had suffered significant declines in readiness as a result of the cash flow problems, despite earlier assertions by top officials that preparedness levels were high.

White House and Pentagon officials declined to say how the President would find the money needed to pay for the increase--by cutting domestic programs, proposing new tax hikes or allowing the federal budget deficit to grow.

But Andrew F. Krepinevich, director of the Defense Budget Project, a nonpartisan defense-monitoring group, said that, with the overall federal budget now so tight, Clinton may be forced “to stand his priorities on their head . . . and raid his domestic programs.”

Reaction from Republicans was muted. Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.), the expected chairman of the House Armed Services Committee next year, said that he was heartened by the announcement but that defense spending still falls short of what is needed.

Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who is expected to head the Senate Armed Services panel, expressed similar sentiments. “We have a readiness problem now and we will have a readiness problem after the President’s initiative,” he said. He called Clinton’s plan merely “a good start.”

There was some dispute over how far the initiative would go to close the gap between the long-term goals of Clinton’s defense program--to enable the military to fight two major regional wars nearly simultaneously--and what he actually has budgeted for defense.

John M. Deutch, deputy secretary of defense, told reporters that by delaying or reducing weapons programs the Administration could eliminate the gap, which is now officially estimated at $49 billion over the six-year period. But many outside analysts disagreed.

Administration officials listed four separate parts of the initiative:

* Some $2.7 billion over five years to boost morale and retention rates by improving military housing conditions, expanding child care, welfare and recreation programs and providing an extra pay allowance for personnel stationed in high-cost areas.

* About $12.5 billion during the period to provide maximum cost-of-living allowances to military personnel--an increase that the Administration eliminated as a cost-cutting move in its first defense budget but was later forced by Congress to provide.

* Up to $9.8 billion in additional funds, most of it toward the end of the decade, for modernizing the armed forces by buying new, presumably high-technology weapons to replace aging aircraft, warships, tanks, missiles and guns.

* A request for an emergency appropriation in January--probably for about $2.3 billion--to reimburse the services for money spent carrying out peacekeeping and rescue missions. Without these funds, they would have to cut training and maintenance.

Officials said that the money earmarked for readiness would be used to restore regular training schedules, reduce backlogs at military depots and maintenance facilities and buy more special munitions.

It also is expected to go to train more relief crews to help alleviate

strains on military personnel who are in units that are constantly on the go, such as Airborne Warning and Control Systems aircraft, Patriot air-defense missile battalions and Navy frigates.

In addition to restoring operation and maintenance funds, the money is expected to reduce the number of major new weapons programs that the Pentagon is likely to have to delay or cut back.

In a memorandum to service chiefs last August, Deutch asked for proposals for cutting or postponing as many as 10 such projects, including the Air Force’s proposed new F-22 jet fighter, to help finance the pay hike and readiness programs, though he gave no dollar total for the cuts.

On Thursday, however, he said that the cutbacks probably would not exceed $10 billion or $12 billion, a figure he described as sharply reduced from the undisclosed target he had anticipated before.

For all the White House hoopla over the $25 billion, officials disclosed that almost three-fourths of the money would not be disbursed until fiscal 1999, three years after Clinton’s current term in office.

As a result, despite the President’s new package, overall defense spending still is expected to decline through fiscal 1997 before finally turning up again. By 1999, it would rise 1 percentage point more rapidly than inflation.

At the briefing for reporters, Deutch denied suggestions that the President’s proposal is designed to preempt the Republicans. “This program has not been adjusted because of elections,” he said. “It is the same program that was provided for before.”

However, officials conceded that Thursday’s announcement was unusual. It was made two full months before Clinton’s budget is scheduled to be unveiled, a marked departure from the traditional method of disclosing such decisions as part of the regular budget submission.

Republicans and many nonpartisan analysts described the measure as an attempt to provide a short-term fix.