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Robert Hale

Pentagon Comptroller (since January 2009)

(U.S. Dept. of Defense)

Why He Matters

One Clinton-era defense official called Hale "a comptroller's comptroller." To non-policy wonks, that may not sound like high praise. But considering many federal budget experts believe the Pentagon's budget system is broken, insiders say it will take an individual with Hale's knowledge of how to put together a sound federal spending plan to untangle the U.S. military's messy budgeting.

Save a few examples, defense insiders saw the Bush Pentagon team's post-9/11 management of the Defense Department budget processas a rubber stamp that lacked serious punch. The result? Pentagon spending more than doubled during President George W. Bush's tenure, swelling from "less than $300 billion to more than $600 billion," according to DOD Inspector Gen. Claude Kicklighter. The spending growth under the 43rd president was so steep that the Pentagon IG office, Kicklighter noted in a March 2008 report, was "not able to provide sufficient audit coverage of [Pentagon] acquisition programs given the dollars expended by the department."

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Director of the National Security Division, Congressional Budget Office; Executive Director of the American Society of Military Comptrollers

Website

Path to Power

When President Barack Obama nominated Hale as his Pentagon comptroller, some defense insiders struggled to conjure up a memory of the federal spending expert. But once informed Hale was the director of the national security division of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for 12 years, these individuals' minds were quickly put at ease.

After his 12 years at CBO, Hale was installed as Air Force comptroller in 1994, a post he held until the end of the Clinton administration.

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The Issues

The Bush administration made common practice of using emergency spending measures to finance most Iraq and Afghanistan war bills. Many defense and federal budget experts - and, more importantly, members of both parties on Capitol Hill - argue that the supplemental have injected a number of ills into the Defense Department's already complex budgeting process.

As former independent analyst and now Office of Management and budget defense expert Steven Kosiak has noted, the off-the-books spending can topple dominos across the federal budget. "The failure to include estimates of the costs of these military operations in the administration's annual projections of federal spending means that those projections substantially understate likely future funding requirements," Kosiak wrote in a December 2008 report . "In turn, this may lead the administration and Congress to enact spending increases in other areas or tax cuts that it would not consider if, more realistically, its projections of federal spending requirements included an estimate of war costs."

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Other analysts have pointed out that supplementals, because they typically are rushed to the president's desk to meet battlefield needs, are not subjected to the kind of in-depth congressional oversight as annual Pentagon spending requests. "DoD's supplemental budget requests often do not provide enough detail to determine how the department develops its budget requests. The amount of justification material that DoD provides in its regular budget for activities besides the war and the documentation that it submits for war-related operations differ substantially...DoD's funding requests related to the war have been accompanied by relatively little backup material," Robert Sunshine, assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office, said in January 2007. "For instance, the backup material for the department's original 2006 supplemental request, which totaled about $68 billion, included only five pages on operation and maintenance costs, even though those costs constituted almost half (about $33 billion) of the request."

And the list goes on, according to experts.

Supplemental Signals

Democrats in Congress, including President Obama as a senator and presidential candidate, have for years called for the end of supplementals. Ending the use of emergency budget measures was part of Obama's 2008 campaign platform.

During his January 2009 confirmation hearing, Hale told the Senate Armed Services Committee the department "needs to move away from" using supplementals to finance the wars. While he said the timing of the budget cycle and the start of the Obama administration mean a second 2009 supplemental is almost unavoidable, Hale signaled the days of supplemental budgeting could be over.

"In later budgets, we should be better able to minimize dependence on supplementals," Hale wrote in written answers to the panel's questions. "Regardless of the year, we should avoid including predictable costs in supplemental requests. "

Hale all but committed to avoiding the massive emergency supplementals. But his likely new boss, William Lynn, Obama's pick for deputy defense secretary, did not quite take the bait when asked by senators to essentially take the no-more-supplementals pledge.

In answers to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lynn wrote that "a key issue" for the Obama team during its review of the 2010 budget left behind by the Bush team "will be the formulation of new guidelines for what costs are appropriate for supplemental requests and identifying items that should be funded in the base budget."

In written comments, Lynn called moving away from supplementals "an objective." But Hale said if the Obama administration uses the special spending bills, it might subject the measures to new "DoD scrutiny" similar to that given to annual budgets. He added the Obama Pentagon would submit to lawmakers "early information regarding supplemental requests."

Hale also could be charged with the difficult task of re-linking U.S. military and security strategy with annual Pentagon budgets. Some budget gurus say the current budget plan does not reflect Washington's long-term defense strategy.

The Network

Hale got to know many of Washington's veteran defense sector hands, as well as some key House and Senate stalwarts, during his dozen years managing CBO's national security directorate.

As the Pentagon's top budget official, Hale will be no stranger to his DoD underlings and the Office of Management and Budget officials to whom he will answer: Peter Orszag and Steven Kosiak. At CBO, Hale had a big hand in training many of the individuals who have held U.S. military comptroller posts over the last 15 to 20 years. He has also interacted with many current and former government officials in his most recent role as executive director of the American Society of Military Comptrollers.

Campaign Contributions

According to CampaignMoney.com, Hale has, since 2002, donated thousands of dollars to a number of Democratic organizations and candidates. During the 2008 election cycle, Hale made two contributions to Obama's campaign, a $1,000 donation and another for $500. He also donated $250 to Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who successfully ran for the U.S. House seat representing Virginia's 11th Congressional District.

Hale made separate $1,000 and $500 contributions to the unsuccessful 2004 White House bid of Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry (D).

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