How E Edward Hebert Shaved $46 Billion From the Defense Budget
Rapoport, Daniel
How E Edward Hebert Shaved $46 Billion From the Defense Budget by Daniel Rapoport F. Edward Hebert is retiring from Congress this year. After his fellow Democrats dumped him from...
...Because it was so awfully complicated and dull-sounding, and because it was opposed by someone like Hebert, a whole lot of peopleincluding liberal senators and representativeswould have had us add the costs of recomputation to the defense budget...
...I’m a dictator...
...Then, in a sarcastic parrotting of House reformers, he adds: “Don’t you know, I’m an autocratic son of a bitch...
...He rejected the argument that most pre-1972 retirees would miss out on the hefty pay increases Congress had granted the military in recent years...
...Private pension funds don’t recompute retirement benefits, he maintained, and there’s no reason why the government, which finances the entire military retirement plan, should do so...
...Hebert had opposed recomputation since 1963, when Congress added a cost-of-living escalator to the retirement system...
...The name of the game was ‘agree with me behind closed doors, but don’t come out and tell anybody about it.’ They let me take the heat...
...By contrast, many of those same people today are desperately trying to kill the $21billion B-1 bomber program...
...And if it had been frozen into law, the spending required to implement recompensation would have become mandatory...
...Most of the other members were men who were similarly disposed and who could afford to take the political heat from the retiree groups...
...He says now that the Hartke amendment would have been enacted in 1972 had he merely taken a neutral position, had he allowed his House conferees to vote their inclinations...
...Some of the conferees would not have been able to support Hebert in conference had they been forced to take a public position...
...Be cause of one largely unnoticed “antimilitary” position taken by Hebert in 1972, the country was saved an enormous amount of money, perhaps as much as $46 billion...
...After his fellow Democrats dumped him from the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee at the start of 1975, Hebert mulled it over for awhile, figured that, without the chairmanship it just wasn’t worth hanging around, and decided to pack it in...
...Thus it was hardly surprising when shortly before the end of the year the subcommittee recommended against enactment of any form of recomputation...
...As worthy as that goal may be, its potential savings pale by comparison to what Hebert accomplished...
...A lot of those guys agreed with me but they weren’t willing to stand up and be counted,” recalls Hebert...
...Officials of the Retired Officers Association agree...
...Some of his fellow House conferees favored recomputation...
...Remarkably, Hebert’s achievement still isn’t generally known...
...The potential costs of recomputation are astronomical because so many people would be touched (more than 800,000 in 1972) and the effects would linger so far into the future (well into the 21st century...
...PredicatCd on an average increase in the Consumer Price Index of 4.5 per cent, the actuarial study projected a Hartke amendment cost of $34.3 billion between 1975 and the year 2000 and $46 billion by the time the last affected retirees died...
...Although he was a strong chairman at a time when a strong chairman could still exercise muscle, Hebert went into the conference with mixed prospects...
...Its chief sponsor in the Senate was Vance Hartke, celebrated at the time for his early and vocal opposition to the Vietnam war...
...But many of them also voted to dethrone the Louisiana conservative because they felt he was too close to the military, the very institution that he was supposed to be overseeing...
...New York and other cities that have been generous with municipal employees are painfully discovering these built-in truths about pension plans...
...President Nixon was already for it, fulfilling a pledge he-and his two opponents, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace-had made in the 1968 election campaign...
...Hebert, chairman of the House delegation to the conference, was determined not to let that happen...
...As a result, it’s no surprise that a good part of the American populace views him as a saber-rattling, hell-onwheels booster of the military...
...UD and UD During a relatively brief Senate debate, Hartke said his version of recomputation would cost $275 million the first year and about $10 billion over the lifetime of the programthat is, until the last pre-1972 retiree had died...
...It also amassed a battery of statistics and arguments that has pretty well shot down recomputation for years to come...
...The list of backers included virtually the entire roster of blue-chip, ADAcertified liberals...
...its vote was 82 to 4. The ''n~'' votes were cast by Senators John Stennis, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, J. William Fulbright, James Buckley, and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield...
...So do impartial observers...
...He snuffed out any flickering rebellious tendencies on the part of members who were inclined to buy the Hartke amendment, and instead spent most of his time fashioning a “compromise” that Stennis could present to the Senate with a straight face...
...He named as chairman of the subcommittee Rep...
...In the summer of 1972 just about everybody in Congress and national politics was on record in favor of recomputation...
...Hebert frequently reacts to foreign policy crises with fire-breathing rhetoric...
...Samuel Stratton, a harddriving congressman who generally shared Hebert’s opinion of recomputation...
...The House's much tighter germaneness rules blocked recomputation supporters from attaching the Hartke amendment to the House version of the weapons bill...
...Hebert killed recomputation by resorting to old-time wheeling and dealing, throwing his weight around, and taking advantage of such prereformera institutions as closed-door conferences...
...But the House could have agreed to accept it as part of the anticipated conference agreement over differences between the two measures...
...Later that year the House Armed Services Committee asked the Defense Department to run an actuarial study to determine just how much the Hartke program would cost the American taxpayer...
...No one can recall, for example, the last time Hebert spoke out against an expensive weapons system that the Pentagon wanted...
...They would have voted it, but I said no dice,” says Hebert...
...Most of the legislators didn’t realize the full fiscal impact of what they were supporting, and few made a serious effort to find out...
...The Senate passed the Hartke proposal as an amendment to the annual military weapons authorization...
...Lending Hartke his prestige as well as his vote was George McGovern, fresh from his capture of the Democratic presidential nomination, a race he had won after vowing to cut the defense budget by $30 billion...
...Recomputation would allow retirees to calculate their pensions on the basis of subsequent pay scales, which of course would reflect the raises granted to active duty personnel since the retirees retired...
...Hebert’s stand was over something called recomputation of military retired pay...
...Well-organized military retiree groups had put the heat on, and persuaded most members of the House and Senate that it would be a small, relatively inexpensive way of rectifying an inequity, something to help out impoverished ex-sergeants...
...The Department's answer: $343 million the first year and $19 billion for its duration...
...Others were not as ardently-or at least not as openly-against recomputation as he was...
...He quickly appointed a special subcommittee and directed it to get right to work-but he made sure that its findings would agree with his views...
...The concession he finally came up with was a promise that his committee would thoroughly study the recomputation issue...
...This is how it works: The government income of military retirees is based on their active duty pay a’t the time of retirement...
...Military retirement pay is tied to the cost of living...
...Hebert kept his promise...
...More significant are estimates the Pentagon came up with in the beginning of 1975, estimates that reflected the soaring inflation the country had experienced since 1972...
...Daniel Rapoport is a contributing editor of National Journal and author of Inside the House...
...And because some of his old allies among military retirees turned bitterly against him over recomputation, Hebert doesn’t talk about it much...
...Throwing His Weight Around Hebert kept a tight rein on his conferees...
...The Democrats said they threw out Hebert because he ran his committee like an autocrat...
...Pentagon critics are largely unaware of it...
...Longtime Pentagon detractor Senator William Proxmire was for it...
...As accurate as that perception may be, it overlooks what is probably Hebert’s most significant legacy...
Vol. 8 • November 1976 • No. 9
