Defense Secretary William Cohen gave Congress a major Pentagon review of strategy, weapons and forces, making it clear that lawmakers must share the burden of helping pare the size of the military.
Cohen met over breakfast at the Pentagon with top House and Senate members and briefed them on the findings of the six-month review. Even before its scheduled debut on Monday, the plan has been criticized for not recommending enough changes in armed forces.Cohen was lunching Thursday with five of his predecessors - former defense secretaries William Perry, Harold Brown, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliot Richardson and Dick Cheney - and gave them a summary, too.
The study has already caused some irritation on Capitol Hill. As part of the review, Cohen has stated he intends to keep the Pentagon budget constant by asking Congress to establish a new process for closing more bases.
"Ultimately, Congress will decide. Ultimately, it's Congress who has control of the purse strings," Cohen said in a speech this week.
Part of Cohen's proposal for the "Quadrennial Defense Review" reportedly is to cut only 100,000 people from the 1.4 million active duty and 900,000 reserve forces and make modest cuts in some weapons programs.
The plan leaves the existing military force and military strategy largely unchanged. But it leaves intact the basic U.S. military goal of being able to fight two major regional wars nearly simultaneously.
On Wednesday, the secretary said he had not had enough time to take a hard look at slimming the Pentagon's own bureaucracy and a panel of defense experts had been named to help him study it. He said he did not have any specific targets for reductions.
"There's a great deal of redundancy in much of what we do. And essentially, we have to find ways in which we can achieve savings," he said.
According to Pentagon publications, 813,000 "direct hire" civilians work for the military departments and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and another 566,000 "blue collar" support staff work for the Pentagon.
"It's my hope that we will be able to help redesign our operations here," Cohen said.