BUDGET : Military’s Un-Martial Outlays Scrutinized

Here’s a tricky question for the serious budget-wonks:

Where in the federal budget would you find spending for:

* Breast-cancer research;

* Environmental cleanup efforts;

* Drug enforcement programs;

* Financing for public schools;

* Aid to the former Soviet Union;

* Jobs for workers in Connecticut;

* Rifle practice for neighborhood teen-agers;

* Government support for the 1996 Olympics;

* Memorial Day and July 4 concerts.

If you’re busily thumbing through the spending programs for all 149 federal departments and agencies, let us save you the trouble: Look under “Department of Defense, Military.” The Pentagon budget has all of these items, and dozens more.

What’s all that stuff doing in the nation’s defense budget?

Many members of Congress have begun asking that question as well. In response to lawmakers’ inquiries, the Congressional Research Service has identified 126 programs in the military budget that have nothing to do with the business of fighting wars.

And Republicans on the new House and Senate national security committees are planning to launch an effort in the 104th Congress to separate out such “non-defense” programs and transfer them to other departments.

Lawmakers who support such a shift argue that stripping the military budget of non-defense programs would free top Pentagon officials--generals, admirals and civilian policy-makers--to concentrate more on military issues.

But their real hope is that revamping the budget would generate billions of dollars in savings that then could be converted to direct military use. It would help “achieve our agenda of a stronger national defense,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

It’s no secret why the Pentagon budget is loaded with such oddities. Aid to public schools, for example, was added during Korean War days to help school districts near military bases absorb the influx of new families. The war ended, but the program remained.

The environmental cleanup money was added to help the Pentagon spruce up polluted military bases that it is about to close before it makes them available for civilian use. And the program to underwrite rifle practice for local youths is a holdover from World War I.

In recent years, Democrats who wanted to provide more money for social spending--and were frustrated by the ceilings that Congress had placed on it--simply funneled the new programs into the Pentagon budget instead.

Partly as a result, the size of the non-defense portion of the Pentagon budget has soared. The Defense Budget Project, a nonpartisan defense-monitoring group, estimates that the total has mushroomed to $23 billion in fiscal 1995, up from $11.6 billion in fiscal 1990.

Dov Zakheim, a defense expert with System Planning Corp., a defense-oriented consulting firm, argues that a solution would be to transfer responsibility for non-defense programs to other agencies, but to leave the money spent for those programs in the defense budget for use on the military.

Critics of the idea argue that removing breast-cancer and environmental programs may make for a more pristine defense budget, but the Pentagon is unlikely to benefit from any savings. Carole Lessure, an analyst for the Defense Budget Project, warns that most of the non-defense programs transferred to other departments would probably continue to be funded.

Some speculate that lawmakers will leave the non-defense programs in the Pentagon’s portfolio, but try to save money by easing regulations.

That will not yield anywhere near the pot of gold that some pro-defense senators envision. But a billion dollars here and there can add up to big money.

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Beyond Weapons

Non-defense spending in the Pentagon budget has become a growing share of the defense pie.

Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscala Spending program 1990 1991 1992 1993 1995 Defense conversion NA $2.3 $3.5 $2.4 $2.4 Post-Cold War reductions, $0.7 $1.0 $2.1 $2.6 $3.1 including base-closures Environmental programs $1.4 $4.0 $4.4 $5.4 $5.7 Health programs for $7.6 $9.0 $8.8 $9.1 $9.2 dependents, retirees Drug interdiction $0.6 $0.8 $1.0 $0.8 $0.7 International aid NA $0.5 $0.3 $0.5 $0.9 Aid to schools near military $1.2 $1.3 $1.2 $1.3 $1.1 bases TOTAL: $11.6 $21.2 $19.0 $21.2 $23.0 Percentage of total 3.9% 7.9% 6.7% 7.9% 9.1% Pentagon budget:

Source: Defense Budget Project