Panetta defends civilian workforce

The Pentagon’s top brass is cautioning that the Defense Department’s civilian workforce might have to be reassessed in future years.

Testifying at a Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the Obama administration’s fiscal 2013 budget request, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta concurred with Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., that legislation that proposes cutting the federal workforce by 10 percent in 10 years through attrition ultimately could be detrimental to the department.

“I realize that savings could be achieved there, but the civilian workforce does perform a very important role for us in terms of support,” Panetta told Moran. “I just think that if we are going to do sequester, we really need to look at all of the areas that the president and others have suggested in order to try to detrigger not just the defense side of the budget, but the domestic side of sequestration.”

If lawmakers allow scheduled governmentwide budget cuts -- sequestration -- to move forward in 2013, then the Defense Department faces an additional $600 billion in cuts on top of a fiscal 2013 budget request that is $45 billion below its initial projections.

Many defense analysts think sequester is not likely and some maintain the department could weather such cuts anyway.

The Downpayment to Protect National Security Act, proposed late last year by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., would reduce the number of federal employees by 10 percent over 10 years through attrition to offset the potential sequestration spending cuts for one year. Under the plan, one federal worker would be hired for every three who retire.

Senate Republicans have proposed similar, companion legislation to the House bill. Moran argued at this week’s hearing that both pieces of legislation would target a large share of Defense’s workforce.

“Federal employees have already contributed more than $60 billion to deficit reduction. They did not cause our national debt and they should not have to shoulder the full burden of efforts to fix it,” Moran said in a statement.

Defense’s fiscal 2013 budget request proposes lowering the Army’s ranks from 570,000 -- its highest-ever post-Sept. 11, 2011, level -- to 490,000, and decreasing and Marine Corps troops from 202,000 to 182,000 within the next five years. The Army also plans to eliminate eight brigade combat teams to achieve the reduction.

Defense Comptroller Robert Hale cautioned that cuts to the department’s federal civilian workforce would have to be considered in the future, calling its decline in the last few years -- somewhere between 1 percent and 2 percent -- “pretty modest” and similar to reductions in the military.

“I think it’s an issue we’ll have to look at again,” Hale told Moran during the hearing. “We are trying hard to make some reductions in contractor workforce where that’s a cost-effective decision.”

The department’s fiscal 2013 budget request includes provisions that also affect defense contractors, including reimbursement caps on contractor pay.

“And that’s part of the reason there’s modest decline, but I do think in the out-years we’ll have to look at the mix,” Hale said.