By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., National Journal
After Richard Danzig served as a Pentagon civilian from 1977 to 1981, President Bill Clinton named him undersecretary of the Navy and then Navy secretary. Since 2001, he has acted as a consultant to the Defense Department on biological warfare. He is now one of Barack Obama's top advisers on defense policy.
NJ: If Senator Obama is elected, won't his promise to pull combat forces out of Iraq put tremendous pressure on him to cut defense, especially by doing away with supplemental spending bills?
Danzig: Withdrawal from Iraq generates some savings, but it also generates some costs, [for example] the refurbishment of equipment -- the so-called reset of the Army and Marine Corps. Supplementals have not only been used to deal with unexpected contingencies in the operating budget, like the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; they've also been used to smuggle in items that should be part of the base budget. One of the problems any new administration is going to have to deal with is this bad budgeting technique.
Full story: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=40497&dcn=e_gvet
