Gates and the Defense Budget Easter Egg Hunt

While Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised the four services for coming up with budget cuts to help generate $100 billion in savings over the next five years in a speech yesterday, he expressed frustration with similar efforts by the combat commands, Defense agencies, the Joint Staff and the Pentagon bureaucracy.

Gates, in his last speech before leaving office, said that while these organizations consume $64 billion a year, getting a handle on their budgets was "something akin to an Easter egg hunt. My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as "how much money did you spend" and "how many people do you have?"

He also compared these outfits to "a semi-feudal system -- an amalgam of fiefdoms without centralized mechanisms to allocate resources, track expenditures, and measure results relative to the department's overall priorities"

Gates told his audience at the American Enterprise Institute that there is still a lot of fat to cut in these fiefdoms. "There are still too many headquarters, offices, and agencies employing too many high ranking personnel and contractors, consuming too many resources relative to real military missions and measurable results," Gates said.