The Constitution establishes Congress as a counterweight

By Ike Skelton

I believe history will show that the swiftness of America's military victory in Iraq was due in large part to the in-depth training of our officers in strategy and plans and to the military's application of that training in the operational plans developed in the months before the war. Many people, including the secretary of defense, had detailed lists of what could go wrong. We avoided those outcomes, partly thanks to luck but mostly because of deliberate military planning that sought out and compensated for potential risks and unintended consequences.

In April, as Congress was departing for a two-week recess, the Defense Department submitted a 200-page draft "transformation" bill that requests extensive new authorities. It is not an understatement to say that this bill, taken as a whole, is the most sweeping defense reform legislation proposed since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which changed both the structure and the policies governing our military. The only thing that is obvious and consistent throughout the 50 provisions included in this bill is the aggregation of power sought for the Department of Defense, removing the legal restrictions and congressional oversight that should safeguard against any abuses, however unintentional. This approach is a rush to judgment that will affect vast numbers of people and, in many cases, will enshrine bad policy in law.

Major reassignments of constitutional authority such as this demand the same sort of thoughtful foresight as a war plan. In fact, the Goldwater-Nichols legislation took Congress four years to pass. The armed services committees of both houses of Congress held dozens of hearings and spent months drafting a comprehensive and bipartisan bill. We did this because the scope of the legislation was broad, the potentially unforeseen implications were numerous and the impact on the lives of all those who serve this nation was enormous.

The House of Representatives is to consider and vote on a defense authorization bill today that has much to commend it. It will authorize $400 billion to ensure that our forces remain the best trained and best equipped in the world. But it will also include large pieces of the transformation package - even though the committee has held fewer than five hearings, and most of those with less than a week's notice. Without the time to investigate and ask the tough questions, we do not know what the implications of these changes are. And so we, unlike Gen. Tommy Franks in Iraq, cannot build a plan to avoid the worst outcomes.

The proposed legislation makes sweeping changes to both military and civilian personnel systems. On the civilian side, the Defense Department wants unfettered freedom to hire and fire its nearly 700,000 employees. Congress had a long, contentious debate over similar personnel proposals when creating the Department of Homeland Security. That legislation is barely being implemented now, and there has been no opportunity to evaluate its results. The Defense Department wants changes that are even more dramatic, including, just as one example, the repeal of laws preventing nepotism. What justification based on our national security or sound management principles can justify that? What message does this send to the hundreds of thousands who have dedicated their careers to the service of this nation? And why do such changes need to be rushed through now, when a successful military campaign has shown that the existing system works?

The department also is requesting extensive exemptions from a host of environmental laws that have helped safeguard the long-term health of our communities and of the global environment. As a solidly pro-military member of Congress, I believe the readiness and exceptional training of our troops are of paramount importance and should be taken into account in our environmental laws. But the Defense Department has not yet made use of the legal remedies that already exist to accommodate military readiness. Operations in Iraq showed the exquisite capability of the U.S. military trained under the current system. Changing the law at this point has not been shown to be needed for military readiness, but it will certainly undermine the legal structure that ensures the nation's environmental health.

The Constitution establishes Congress as a counterweight to executive authority for good reasons: to guard against the excessive aggregation of any administration's power and to ask critical questions that allow better policy and better law to be made. When we in Congress are doing our jobs well, we ask what every American should want to know: Why is this necessary and what are the downsides of taking this action? Without the ability to question and consider fully the implications of what we do, we abandon the planning needed to protect our nation's security and to protect those who serve their nation. We would not accept that of the officers planning a military campaign. We should not accept it from our political leaders either.

Ike Skelton represents Missouri's 4th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he is the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. This column was published in May in The Washington Post.