Pentagon to start bargain-hunting to trim budget

WASHINGTON - The Defense Department has unveiled a surprising new plan to start reining in its supersized budget: After nine years of unbridled war spending, the military will finally start bargain-hunting.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a Pentagon news conference yesterday that the military will begin factoring in affordability before committing to a purchase. Any contracts exceeding $1 billion will be scrutinized in particular for ways to keep costs down. And when looking to spend money, the military will try to do more comparison shopping, he said.

The initiatives are part of Gates' goal to find $100 billion in budget fat in the next five years, money he says is needed to care for U.S. troops and modernize weapons.

Such steps may seem like common sense in most American households during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. But the Defense Department has mostly escaped any belt-tightening in the past decade, as it committed tens of thousands of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, were eager to support the troops.

The Pentagon now spends roughly $700 billion a year, which includes the cost of both wars. Of that amount, about $200 billion is spent on goods like new weapons and fuel and $200 billion goes toward services like weapons maintenance and computer networking.

Defense officials and budget hawks say the heightened spending in recent years prompted a feeding frenzy within the defense industry. Meanwhile, there was minimal oversight from the Pentagon, which was more focused on equipping troops on the battlefield than on comparing costs.

Gates' proposal, announced yesterday, takes aim at the defense industry and the $400 billion a year it earns in contracts for goods and services.