Chuck Grassley: “I wish I could say, Mr. President, that the Department of Defense has turned the corner. I wish I could report that…”

“I wish I could say, Mr. President, that the Department of Defense has turned the corner. I wish I could report that infrastructure costs were coming down. But the latest report of the General Accounting Office tells me that nothing has changed since the last future year defense plan, meaning 1996. The trends have to be the same. The Pentagon still has infrastructure costs on the wrong track. They are still on an up-ramp instead of on a down-ramp. This is what the new data show. As the Department of Defense budget top line goes up, infrastructure costs go up. Infrastructure costs should come down even if the top line goes up. The infrastructure costs ought to be decoupled from the top line. The infrastructure costs need to be recoupled to the force structure because that is what Secretary Perry says is his intent. The infrastructure costs in the military force structures are not in sync. They are out of whack. We need to bring them back into balance. As I read what Senator McCain has written in his white paper, he says that is what we must do as well. But that is not what has happened. The Department of Defense seems to be creating new infrastructure faster than the old stuff is made excess. That is what this new data tells us. This is its new data that the General Accounting Office has followed for 1 year that was not available until the General Accounting Office updated it. It shows a steady increase in the infrastructure costs for fiscal year 1997 through fiscal year 2001.”