In My Time - Dick Cheney [87]
When I took the podium that morning, I knew I would be asked about the Post story. It was the first question out of the gate. “Are we in fact close to a compromise on those two weapons systems?” a reporter asked. “I have as yet made no decision,” I answered. “To say that a compromise is near, I think would be premature.”
Then the second question: “General Welch, the chief of staff of the air force, apparently has been up on the Hill working this program himself. Is that a change of policy for the Defense Department to have a service chief negotiate his own strategic system?”
I answered directly. “General Welch was freelancing. He was not speaking for the department. He was obviously up there on his own hook, so to speak.” Then I was asked whether I accepted this. “No, I’m not happy with it, frankly. I think it’s inappropriate for a uniformed officer to be in a position where he is in fact negotiating an arrangement. I have not had an opportunity yet to talk to him about it. I’ve been at the White House all morning. I will have the opportunity to discuss it with him and I will make known to him my displeasure. Everybody’s entitled to one mistake.”
My statement sent a clear message through the building about who was in charge. And that’s what I had intended. I found out later that Welch believed he had gotten approval to go ahead with the Hill talks from Will Taft, the department’s outgoing deputy secretary, who had been acting secretary until I was confirmed, and I came to regard Welch as a fine officer. But in the meantime I had signaled my intention to exercise control and authority over the Department of Defense.
I TOOK OFFICE EXACTLY thirty-nine days before I had to present my first defense budget to the Congress. Although I had inherited this first budget, I was determined to master it, knowing that being able to answer any and all questions about it was the best way to get off to a good start. Being knowledgeable about the budget during that first session with my former colleagues on the Hill helped set a tone for my long-term relations with the Congress.
For subsequent budgets, we established a unique arrangement for preparing the department’s requests. Typically cabinet and agency heads negotiate for their budgets with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but during my time at Defense, the president and I would sit down at the beginning of the process with Dick Darman, the director of OMB, and agree on an overall top line for Defense. This arrangement allowed Darman to get a fix on the largest discretionary item in the budget so that he’d know what was left for everyone else. It allowed me to avoid the give-and-take with OMB and know exactly how much I had to work with. As long as I stayed within that agreed-upon top line, I was free, with few exceptions, to put together the defense budget.
My strongest ally in the Congress was Democrat Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, whom I’d gotten to know when we served together in the House. Murtha was chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and at the beginning of each legislative session, I would invite him over for breakfast in my office at the Pentagon. We would discuss which items were high priority for each of us and put together a back-of-the-envelope outline of a bill.
Murtha was a master legislator. Once he got behind a proposal, it usually got approved. One year he arranged to pass the defense appropriations bill worth many billions of dollars on a voice vote without amendment. At the end of each session, the bill enacted was very close to what we had agreed to back in January at the beginning of the process.
The years