Army Gets 'Rare' Senate Appropriations Support.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki enjoys unprecedented levels of support from Capitol Hill for his "transformation" initiative to modernize the Army, said Kraig Siracuse, professional staff member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee.

The committee's chairman, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is "very supportive of this chief," Siracuse told the Association of the U.S. Army's winter symposium.

Last fiscal year, he noted, the committee increased the Army's budget for transformation programs by $500 million, without specifying in great detail how the money should be spent. "That's a big pot of money. It's a very rare thing for us in Congress, especially in the appropriations committee, to put pots of money without a lot of requirements," said Siracuse. "It's rare to have such great confidence in the chief."

Addressing questions from the audience about the future of defense spending, Siracuse suggested that the most significant indicator was in President Bush's budget speech in February. The emphasis was on increased spending for education, he said. "Your problem right now is education vs. defense."

Bush also talked about a $5.7 billion boost for military pay and benefits. But he has not explained where that money will come from, said Siracuse. It is not clear whether the funds will result from an increase in the top line or whether they will be drawn from existing Pentagon accounts, such as modernization and procurement.

For that reason, Pentagon brass should start thinking about setting priorities for future resource-allocation, said Siracuse. President Bush talked about discarding Cold War relics, he said. "In our committee, we are trying to determine what are the relics." The Army, for example, needs to decide how it will constitute its force so that it can sustain the current systems and invest for the future. "We are concerned about the legacy force," he said. "It's talked about a great deal, but how are we paying for that, while we modernize?"

Another potential hurdle for those on Capitol Hill who support plus-ups in defense spending is simple politics, said Siracuse. It was easier during the Clinton administration for a Republican Congress to add money to defense, "but it's going to be harder to do that now, for a Republican Congress to add money to a Republican president's budget."

If something is not in the president's budget, he said, "I think that it's going to be hard to plus it up."

The committee, said Siracuse, also plans to look at issues such as:

* Maintaining an industrial base. "It's harder for small businesses to enter the defense market," he said.

* Multi-year procurements. "We like [them] a lot as a tool. They are helpful, but you can't have multi-years and then cancel the program halfway through."