John Spratt: “let me raise, since no one else is, some concerns about this bill. There are some breathtaking changes here. This bill…”

“let me raise, since no one else is, some concerns about this bill. There are some breathtaking changes here. This bill would cut management personnel in the Department of Defense by 25 percent; it would cut people classified as acquisition management personnel by 42 percent. Now I think that we need to impose external pressure on the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, in order to effect these cuts so that the overhead, the white-collar workers, are reduced commensurate with the reduction in force of the guys and women that fight the wars, but is 45 percent, 42 percent, a sustainable number? Exactly whom are we cutting? Engineers? Accountants? And when we cut these people, will we emasculate program management to the point where we cannot oversee defense contractors, costing us money, buying things imprudently, $600 toilet seats again? And when we find that we have cut too far, if we have, will we go back out and contract the very same people who are now in a different guise as civilians, and we will pay them more because they will earn more and they will have bigger overhead themselves? Are we saving money or are we not? I do not think we have weighed sufficiently, the pros and cons, delved sufficiently into the Department of Defense to know whether or not we can sustain without some lasting damage a 25 percent cut in management personnel or a 42 percent cut. We are taking 124,000 acquisition management workers off of 269,000.…”