The Gates Speech, Part Three: The Cows (Sacred, That Is)

In his address Saturday in Kansas, Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn't just speak generically about the need to trim overhead and cut bureaucracy. He directly and specifically went farther out on a limb than any Defense secretary in recent memory in taking on the department's sacred cows on Capitol Hill--and even in the White House.

Here are two of the biggest:

Health Care: Military health care costs, Gates said, "are eating the Defense Department alive," rising from $19 billion a decade ago to $50 billion now. This is not exactly news. As far back as September 2001, Katherine McIntire Peters was reporting in GovExec that "Congress repeatedly has expanded [military] health care benefits without appropriating additional funds to pay for them." And that was before the implementation of a requirement that TRICARE, the military's managed care program, be opened to retirees. Gates' message on TRICARE was blunt: He lamented that premiums under the program never seem to go up and indicated that military retirees with full-time post-service jobs should get health coverage through their employers. He lamented that any proposals to rein in the programs' cost "routinely die an ignominious death on Capitol Hill."

Pay: The "admirable sentiment" to take care of the troops also "motivates the Congress routinely to add an extra half percent to the pay raise that the department requests each year," Gates lamented. Even before his speech, Pentagon officials were spreading the word that Congress ought to hold the line on military pay increases.

But make no mistake: It's not just Congress that wants to make sure troops and their families are taken care of when it comes to pay and health benefits. You don't see presidents rushing to cuts such items, either. So tilting at this windmill may be Gates' biggest challenge.