The mini-drama of whether or not the government will buy the Crusader self-propelled artillery piece appears near an end.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday the weapon won’t be built, setting up a confrontation with Congress over the issue and putting at risk 800 jobs at United Defense Industries in Fridley.
The drawn-out decision illustrates how complicated the intersection of politics and economics can get even when government confines itself to core functions such as national defense. Simply put, it shows how easily pork and PACs can beat priorities and principles.
The U.S. Army wanted to buy a new system to replace the aging M-109 introduced in the early 1960s. The Bush Administration, however, decided there were better uses for the $425 million planned for the weapon in fiscal year 2004 and for the $11 billion or so that would be spent over several years buying the system.
Some Army leaders tried an end run around Rumsfeld, going directly to key members of Congress to get them to keep the Crusader in the appropriations bill.
Minnesota Sen. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has stated his strong support for the system and reportedly is bringing whatever weight he can to bear on his colleagues.
But the national interest, as so often happens in military procurement, is already losing.
A democracy is supposed to work something like this: Citizens elect members of Congress. These senators and representatives are supposed to represent the interests of the people in their state or district who elected them, but at the same time are supposed to consider the best interests of the country as a whole.
Congress is split into two houses precisely to compensate for any divergence between local and national interests. The 435 representatives are assumed to be responsive to the particular district that elected them. The 100 senators, with terms three times as long, can focus more on the broader interests of their state and on the needs of the nation as a whole.
But elected officials are human. When there’s a conflict between the broader national interest and the interest of one state or district, they tend to deny any trade-offs and claim that the position favoring their state is also optimal for the nation.
For example, senators from Vermont argue that the New England Dairy Compact is not only good for farmers in their region, but that it somehow benefits all U.S. citizens.
Representatives from Nevada argue that storing nuclear waste in that state would not only hurt Nevadans, but would be a bad option for our country as a whole.
The tendency to confound local and national interest is accentuated when the local interest at stake entails resources that can make or break a re-election campaign. Personal principles and policy priorities get stood on their heads when dollars or votes are at stake.
Long-time Sen. Alan Cranston was a tireless critic of excess military spending and waste in military procurement — unless the spending was for hardware produced in his home state of California. A dyed-in-the-wool liberal, Cranston was an indefatigable proponent of the B-1 bomber even when the Carter administration and many Air Force officials wanted to kill the program and shift the resources to the stealth B-2.
Dayton seems to be following in Cranston’s footsteps. He repeatedly campaigned on social issues, especially medical coverage and drug costs, with little mention of defense issues.
But once elected and appointed to the Armed Services Committee, the junior senator became a born-again advocate of strengthened national defense. To listen to him, you’d think that keeping the Crusader artillery system is the nation’s most pressing need.
It is not.
As someone with 30 years of active and reserve Army service, I know well that our aging self-propelled howitzers are long in the tooth. We were out-ranged and outgunned by Soviet artillery during most of the Cold War. Fortunately, that never mattered. The Crusader unquestionably would give the Army and Marine Corps greater firepower.
But given the military threats we face in coming decades, any artillery deficiencies simply aren’t as important as competing needs in defense, foreign policy and domestic programs. The Crusader would be very nice to have, but so would many other things.
Discerning the proper trade-off between local jobs or political support and broader national priorities would be complicated enough, even if defense contractors didn’t know how to play Congress like a violin.
They know that if they spread procurement subcontracts around to enough districts, the likelihood that local pressures will dominate overall national needs will be greater.
Rockwell, the prime contractor for the B-1, famously spread component purchases around to 47 of 50 states, and the F/A-18 got parts from every state except Wyoming. Weapons cost more when component production is so finely subdivided, but contractors and Congressional members consider that an acceptable trade-off in reaching their individual narrower priorities.
While the Crusader’s pork is not sliced quite as thinly as that of the B-1 and F/A-18, one still hopes that Rumsfeld’s decision will not be overturned by Congress.
© 2002 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.