7 Time No-Go: DOGE Justification
No where, and I mean NO WHERE, in the military will you find a seven-time task failure “acceptable”.
I don’t care if it is an officer or non-commissioned officer professional development course, a technical training course, a leadership school, a “try-out”, or a qualification. If ANYONE fails a task seven times, they are DONE. In fact, you’d be lucky to be given a third opportunity, let alone a seventh, before someone tells you “that’s enough”.
You don’t get seven shots at Ranger School, or BUD/S, or Staff College, or the Sergeants Major Academy. You don’t get three shots at being a commander. The Navy has been firing boat captains at a frenetic pace for “loss of confidence” after months of command. No one gets a seventh try.
Unless you’re the Department of Defense and that task is an audit of your spending.
First things first, it is NOT a budget. And it damn sure isn’t a Profit and Loss statement. What the Department of Defense has is a SPEND PLAN. Let’s make sure we are using accurate terms. DoD does NOT make money. They are given money, and they spend money. That’s it. BIG sums of money coming in from Congress and a plan to spend it all.
Second, there are entire courses in the military to explain in detail how money is requested, allocated, and spent. It is an extremely elaborate and involved process that very few truly understand. The DoD fiscal year runs from 1 October to 30 September annually. You are given money at the beginning and it all better be spent by the end, or you won’t get as much next year. There are dollars allocated for spending in the “out years” for long-term projects and there are budget supplements that occasionally happen, but it’s the same cycle year after year.
Commanders, down to the lowest levels of command across the services, are taught early they are stewards of taxpayer money, and they better not waste it. Annual spend plans are developed. Expenditures are projected. They are held accountable. They are monitored. They have to explain deviations. The rules are made clear on how money is to be spent, on what, and why.
At the highest levels of command, those responsibilities are delegated from the commander to staff members and lower-level commanders. Yes, the authority to spend is still on the commander, but some staff officer is tracking the money and who is spending what and how. That staff officer briefs the commander on the “budget” in a somewhat regular fashion. At least, in theory. Many high-level commanders are busy people and when the calendar gets full, certain things tend to fall off…like budget briefings. Maybe the weekly turns into a monthly or the monthly turns into a quarterly.
Then, suddenly, that commander is gone. Off to another assignment. A promotion for a job well done. Or maybe retirement. There is a high likelihood the outgoing commander will never feel the impact of their lack of fiscal attention or discipline. And the “new guy” won’t know enough if there is something wrong. By the way, the staff officer who is tracking all this and eagerly trying to brief their boss…they are probably on their way out the door, too, leaving a continuity file for their replacement they may never meet.
You know who DOES know what’s going on and has all the continuity? The civilian or civilians who have been working in that office for a decade plus. They know EVERYTHING. They know how much money was allocated two, three, four years ago. They know where it went and how it was spent. They know what was requested and denied or approved. They have files going back as long as they have been there, and probably farther.
They are the information chain. As the uniformed officers come and go, the “tie-guy” or the “little lady in tennis shoes” remain. You could leave the Pentagon and come back a decade later and see those same faces sitting at those same desks processing the same paperwork. They are the necessary evil in the current structure because DoD has determined “Up or Out!” for all their leaders. You hold a job just long enough to understand it and then you move on. Career progression. Development. It’s all three inches deep and a mile wide.
Occasionally, an officer will return to the same organization or directorate in the Pentagon having more than a familiarity with fiscal and budgetary processes. The Navy and Air Force do that MUCH better than the Army and the Marine Corps because boats and planes cost a LOT of money. Soldiers and Marines focus on being “in the fight” instead of understanding how their services and DoD actually work. And it is to their own detriment, by the way. Those occasional officers are just that, occasional, and they are still far from experts.
So, we are back to the civilian contingent working in the Pentagon. Those DoD or Department of the Army, or Navy, or Air Force civilians who have been writing funding and “budget” proposals for a dozen years or more. They do all the heavy lifting within the processes. They are there before the officer gets there and long after the officer leaves.
It would be very easy to hold the last seven years’ worth of SECDEFs and Chairmen and Service Chiefs and all their staffs accountable for the failed audits. AND WE SHOULD because it is STILL their responsibility. It would be very easy to examine the failed personnel management policies that preclude the services from having EXPERT uniformed members in the Pentagon. AND WE SHOULD because that is the ROOT cause for all of this.
However, this failed SEVENTH audit is the best justification for DOGE within DoD. If the current continuity is anchored in the civilian employees at the Pentagon and THEY are the ones who know and understand and do all the heavy lifting within the process, then THEY also need to be held accountable. Their roles and responsibilities need to be examined and then validated or eliminated.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the awesome executive assistants, secretaries, etc., in the GS-11 and below world. I’m talking about the SES and GS-13 and above crowd. Those people, many of them retired officers, who HAVE been in their jobs long enough to gain expertise and SHOULD have the data at their fingertips to provide for the audit team. They need to be examined.
In some cases, it may be the individual who needs to go. The job may be important enough to keep, but it just needs better performance. In other cases, the entire position may need to go, no matter how good the person at the desk is.
If DOGE is about saving taxpayer money, reducing overhead, and gaining efficiency, DoD is definitely the place to start. And if DoD is the place to start, the civilian workforce within the Pentagon is the launchpad.
Once that fat is trimmed and the DoD spending is accounted for, THEN Congress and the President can start talking about cutting uniformed leaders and changing personnel management policies. AND THEY SHOULD. I am not giving the Generals, Admirals, and SECDEF a pass by any means, but the current policies have forced reliance on the civilian workforce that has clearly failed in their responsibilities. Get to the root of that and then force the services to make changes as a result. That’s my proposal.
Because this 7 Time No-Go is unacceptable and is DOGE Justification.