CHAPTER 9 CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW AND OVERSIGHT A. INTRODUCTION The Congress has a central role in the overall planning and management of the Nation's security and must share responsibility for any fundamental problems. The primary_argument presented in Chapter 3 (The Office of the Secretary of Defense) is that the lack of mission integration in the Defense Department is a serious shortcoming which requires corrective action through substantial reorganization accompanied by new approaches and attitudes. Unfortunately, Congressional actions have traditionally served to frustrate mission integration efforts in DoD. Beyond this deficiency, the current practice of Congressional review and oversight has resulted in substantial instability in defense policies and programs. Efforts to reorganize the Department of Defense will prove imperfect again unless accompanied by changes on Capitol Hill. This chapter's review of the role of the Congress in the formulation of defense policies and programs will be limited to two objectives: • identify and analyze problems associated with congressional involvement in the formulation of defense policies and programs; and • assess the potential impact of changes in congressional behavior on the effectiveness of the Department of Defense. B. EVOLUTION OF CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW AND OVERSIGHT 1. Constitutional Powers of the Congress Relating to National Defense Article 1 of the Constitution enumerates the powers granted to the Congress. Those relating to national defense include the power to declare war, to raise and support the armed forces, to make rules for the government and regulation of the armed forces, to provide for calling for the militia, to organize, arm, and discipline the militia, and to appropriate money. In enumerating the powers of the President under Article 2, the Constitution also provides additional powers to the Legislature as a check upon Executive authority. These include the power to advise and consent on treaties and appointments (by the Senate only) and the ability to vest powers of appointment of lesser officials in persons other than the President. In addition to these primary grants of authority, Article 5 gives the Congress power to dispose of and make rules concerning property belonging to the United States. Beyond all these expressed 52-314 0-85--19 powers, the Congress retains the implied power to conduct investigations. 2. The Organization of the Congress in Providing for the National Defense Because the Nation was born in conflict, providing for the common defense was explicitly identified as a primary and fundamental responsibility of the Federal Government and its Legislature. There was never any question that the Congress would provide itself with the tools to accomplish this task. Article 1 provides that "each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings...." While this has produced different rules, traditions, and behavior in the two Houses of the Congress, their committee structures have been more notable for their similarities than for their differences. Over time, both Houses have had standing committees on Military Affairs, Naval Affairs, and/or the Militia. The creation and evolution of these committees in both the House and the Senate were influenced by internal conflicts and struggles for jurisdiction within the committee system itself. In earlier years, these internal struggles, while present, were less obvious. There were fewer standing committees; the subcommittee structure was informal and ad hoc; and members of one committee were encouraged (and actually appointed) to serve ex officio on other committees or subcommittees with similar interests. In today's Congress, these mutually reinforcing traditions are no longer present. There are more standing committees and subcommittees. Joint tenure of Senators on an authorizing committee and its counterpart subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee is rare and discouraged. The growing complexity of public policy issues strains the traditional jurisdictional distinctions of the standing committees. Under these circumstances, internal conflicts within the committee systems include jurisdictional disputes between authorizing and appropriating committees, between committees involved in defense and those concerned with foreign policy, and between the traditional authorizing and appropriating processes and the relatively new budget process. In fact, introduction of a new budget process in 1974 proved to be one of the most important historical developments in the evolution of congressional procedures and the assertion of congressional powers. These issues are discussed in greater detail in Section C (Key Trends) of this chapter. 3. The Role of the Senate Committee on Armed Services The Senate Committee on Armed Services is a product of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 which, among its actions, combined the Committees on Military Affairs and Naval Affairs. Starting with virtually no organizational structure and only narrow authorizing jurisdiction, the Senate Armed Services Committee has developed a formal subcommittee structure and comprehensive responsibilities for defense authorization. a. Jurisdiction In its formative years, the Committee's attention was necessarily focused on those issues that dominated the postwar environment, including the organization of the new Department of Defense, development of a military capability for the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the resolution of numerous personnel issues which followed from the Second World War. This period was immediately followed by the Korean Conflict, for which the Committee shared oversight responsibilities with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. During the early 1950's, the Committee invested considerable time and effort in the development and oversight of security assistance and related programs. Through 1954, legislation authorizing foreign economic and military aid was at least sequentially (and several times jointly) referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and then the Senate Committee on Armed Services. By 1961, however, the Foreign Assistance Act was referred exclusively to the Foreign Relations Committee. The decline of the Armed Services Committee's involvement in these matters paralleled a period in which the Foreign Relations Committee not only maintained oversight of the Federal agencies responsible for foreign assistance, but continued to be the source of expanding or amending legislation as well. A fundamentally new direction in the jurisdiction of the Committee on Armed Services was begun in 1959 through Public Law 8614, which required annual authorizations of appropriations for the procurement of aircraft, missiles, and naval vessels. This marked the beginning of a steady expansion in the Committee's jurisdiction and authority. Through the requirement for annual authorizations, the Committee found a device for becoming directly and immediately involved in defense policy, including resource allocation decisions. This development of annual authorizations is discussed in Section C on Key Trends. Today the authority and responsibilities of the Committee on Armed Services are found under Rule XXV of the Standing Rules of the Senate. The Rule states that all proposed legislation, messages, petitions, memorials, and other matters relating to the following subjects shall be referred to the Committee: 1. Aeronautical and space activities peculiar to or primarily associated with the development of weapons systems or military operations. 2. Common defense. 3. The Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy, and the Department of the Air Force, generally. 4. Maintenance and operation of the Panama Canal, including administration, sanitation, and government of the Canal Zone. 5. Military research and development. 6. National security aspects of nuclear energy. 7. Navy petroleum reserves, except those in Alaska. 8. Pay, promotion, retirement, and other benefits and privileges of members of the Armed Forces, including overseas education of civilian and military dependents. 9. Selective service system. 10. Strategic and critical materials necessary for the common defense. The Committee on Armed Services is also charged to "study and review, on a comprehensive basis, matters relating to the common defense policy of the United States, and report thereon from time to time." In addition to this general authority, the Committee has specific responsibility for the review of presidential appointments to the Department of Defense. In the discharge of its responsibilities, the Committee exercises four basic powers: the power to authorize appropriations, to call or subpoena witnesses and hold hearings, to conduct investigations, and to recommend statutory nominations to the Senate. b. Organization During the expansion in jurisdiction from 1960 to 1974, the Armed Services Committee continued to organize ad hoc subcommittees oriented toward specific issues and legislation. (The Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee remained the only formally constituted one.) This dynamic period witnessed Committee consideration of the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the war in Vietnam, and the emerging issues of arms control. Membership increased from 13 Senators in 1947 to 18 in 1967, but by 1973 had dropped back to 15. In the 99th Congress, committee membership grew to an all-time high with 19 members. In 1975, the Committee reorganized itself, eliminating many of the temporary ad hoc subcommittees and creating a more formal structure to cope with the larger volume of legislation now being considered on a regular basis. The Committee established the following subcommittees: Intelligence, Preparedness Investigating, National Stockpile and Naval Petroleum Reserves, Military Construction, Arms Control, Tactical Air Power, Research and Development, General Legislation, and Manpower and Personnel. Between 1975 and 1981, the Committee refined its organization further, reducing the number of permanent subcommittees from nine to six. The most significant change in recent years occurred in 1981 when the Committee reoriented several subcommittees from oversight of appropriation accounts to oversight of certain mission areas. Six subcommittees were created. The Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, Sea Power and Force Projection, and Tactical Warfare Subcommittees were given oversight of mission areas, though in practice that oversight was limited to procurement and research and development appropriations. The Manpower and Personnel and Military Construction Subcommittees continued to exercise oversight along the line of appropriation accounts, while the Preparedness Subcommittee had oversight of the operation and maintenance (O&M) appropriation, elements of procurement accounts dealing with munitions, and the overall "readiness" of the military forces. With the start of the 99th Congress in 1985, the Senate directed that the Committee may have no more than six subcommittees. Because the Committee had already planned to create a new Subcommittee on Defense Acquisition Policy, it complied with the Senate's directive by disestablishing the Tactical Warfare Subcommittee. The full committee assumed the responsibilities of the Tactical Warfare Subcommittee, with no redistribution of jurisdiction to the other subcommittees. C. KEY TRENDS Four key trends characterize the evolution of congressional review and oversight of national security policy in recent years. 1. Erosion of National Consensus on Defense and Foreign Policy United States security policy following World War II was informed by a broad consensus over the nature of U.S. interests and the threat posed to those interests by the Soviet Union. That consensus led to an unprecedented shift in defense policy. Unlike the period after World War I, the United States chose to enter into binding military alliances, to maintain a large peacetime military establishment, and to support extensive overseas deployments in order to protect its national interests. That consensus, forged by 1947, prevailed through the 1950's and well into the 1960's. By the second half of the 1960's, however, there were significant signs of erosion. Numerous factors contributed to this erosion. The rift between the Soviet Union and China removed the specter of a communist monolith and presented new opportunities for containing the Soviet Union politically rather than just militarily. The war in Vietnam introduced fresh tensions among NATO allies and divided the United States. Some experts argue that by the middle of the 1970's the United States had tired of its role as a world leader and that the erosion of consensus merely represented a reemergence of American isolationism and a traditional ambivalence toward the military in American society. Yet others argue that American leaders failed to establish clear strategic goals in the increasingly complex and interdependent international political and economic climate of the 1970's. Irrespective of the causes, during the second half of the 1970's, following the Vietnam war, much of the national security consensus collapsed. To the extent that basic concepts of national interests and threats to those interests were no longer uniformly accepted and shared among the American leadership, a psychological and physical retrenchment of the U.S. defense establishment followed. The erosion of the post-World War II consensus undermined the acceptance and support of long-term requirements for defense. The decline of U.S. military capabilities during the 1970's was dramatic. By 1980 the American public judged that this trend had proceeded too far and supported the rebuilding of U.S. military capabilities. Yet while the pattern of physical retrenchment was reversed in the early 1980's, the post-World War II security consensus has not necessarily returned. Fundamental national security questions remain unanswered. • What is the appropriate balance between nuclear and conventional capabilities in providing for national security? • Can NATO meet the requirements of defending Western Europe? o Do the non-U.S. NATO allies bear a fair share of the NATO security burden? • What emphasis should be placed upon conflict with the Soviet Union versus lesser contingencies? • Should and can the United States assume the burden of defending Western interests in the Persian Gulf region? |