House to hold hearings on Defense cuts

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to hold "early and urgent" hearings on the Pentagon's plan to cut contractor personnel and freeze civilian hiring, according to a key lawmaker.

Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly, whose Northern Virginia district would likely feel the brunt of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' plan to cut funding for service support contracts 10 percent annually for the next three years, requested the hearings.

Connolly said in a statement that the cuts were "arbitrary and capricious."

"While I applaud the secretary for looking for internal savings in the Pentagon, I have questions about the justification for his plan," he said.

Connolly, a member of the Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement, said, "These latest proposals no doubt will have significant ramifications on federal management, staffing and procurement, and they deserve tougher scrutiny before we sink additional time and resources into such an effort without having a better idea of whether it will in fact produce the desired results."

Public employee unions also expressed concerns about the Pentagon's plans, which include freezing civilian staffing levels for the next three years and effectively ending the department's insourcing initiative whereby contractor jobs were converted to civil service positions in an effort to improve accountability.

John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement, "The department's budget is in critical condition because of decades of excessive privatization. Surely, we should not give up on the promising but short-lived insourcing effort after just one year."

Gage said he will be seeking clarification from the Defense Department about its insourcing plans, as well as plans to eliminate the Business Transformation Agency; the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, along with the corresponding J6 function on the Joint Staff; and the Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va.