Congress and the B-2: A Triumph of Politics

Abstract

There are many opinions regarding defense spending and its purposes. The annual Department of Defense (DoD) Authorization Bill involves more issues than simply the defense of the country. Among them are politics and adjusting DoD's priorities to reflect the interests of individual members and districts. "Where" defense money is spent is often as important as "What" it is spent on. The Congressional decision to tightly constrain production of the B-2 in the Fiscal Year 1992 (FY 92) DoD Authorization Bill stems from domestic political concerns as much as from national security considerations. The tortuous path to that decision offers an illustration of Congress at work in the politics of defense. Defense policy is not "made" in the traditional sense of a unitary actor deciding what's best for the country based on the issues and their merits. Policy flows from the competition between actors, each with his or her own views of what's right; each striving to maximize his or her own value function. In this essay, the author uses the three organizational decision-making models developed by Graham T. Allison -- Model I: The Rational Actor, Model II: The Organizational Process, and Model III: Bureaucratic Politics -- as a framework to discuss the process. The B-2 -- the central piece in this essay's game of chess -- may well end up as the first major defense program to be terminated after production had begun. Congress, which does not have a reputation as a "Terminator" of defense programs, reached a semi-decision in the long and agonizing 1991 debate over the stealthy bomber. How did they get to this point? With half the money for the total program spent and only 15 bombers authorized? The man at the center of the controversy was Congressman Les Aspin (D, Wisconsin), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 20, 1991
Accession Number
ADA437292

Entities

People

  • C. L. Critchlow

Organizations

  • National War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agreements
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Arms Control
  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Congress
  • Contracts
  • Department Of Defense
  • Governments
  • Information Operations
  • Military Budgets
  • National Security
  • New York
  • Security
  • Standards
  • Ussr
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting
  • Strategic Security Studies