The Defense Department today defended its new policy of keeping its reports to Congress on weighty international security matters short, sweet… and super-short.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), joined by subcommittee chairmen Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), Randy Forbes (R-Va.), Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), complained to reporters today that he’d received a report on China’s military capabilities that was a mere 19 pages long. Last year’s report was 70 pages.
Lawmakers were told this morning that new Pentagon policy dictates that reports to Congress should be kept to 15 pages.
But a statement just issued by the DoD puts the cap at just 10 pages.
“Across the department, we continually strive to provide Congress with the information and analysis it needs to fulfill its vital oversight role, and to do so in the most readable and usable format possible. We also seek to do so in a cost effective manner,” said Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs George Little.
“The department prepares and sends to Congress over 500 reports annually. Last summer, one component within the department issued written guidance on report length,” Little said. “That guidance indicated reports should not exceed ten pages in length, except when the statutory requirements or specific circumstances dictate. The guidance did not in any way seek to restrict information provided to Congress.”
McKeon fired off a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today asking that he be notified within 24 hours that the policy has been rescinded.
“I consider the report to be wholly inadequate and believe it minimizes the uncertainty and the challenges posed by China’s military build-up,” McKeon wrote. “…It would not appear the justification is cost-savings, but rather an internal decision to limit the amount of information to be provided to Congress — irrespective of the subject matter or origin of the requirement.”
Far from saving money, the congressman noted, the stubby China report actually cost $12,000 more than last year’s full-length version.
Sounds good to me.
Would that the same limit applied to legislation.
And no fair using small fonts.
Too many castri want to appease left/liberal panda-hugging sensibilities before promotion time.
No-one in Congress reads them anyway so the page length does not matter.
As for the cost increase, deficits don’t matter! ask Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe…
– seen the PeeChee in 40 years.
I approve of this. If you can’t state your conclusions, while providing inks to the evidence for your conclusions, in less than ten pages, you are simply trying to obfuscate. Of course, someone needs to verify that the evidence supports the conclusions, but that’s why Congressmen have staff.
On the other hand, you can’t let your documents be too short, and you can’t resort to PowerPoint chart junk, like the most famous example.
I understand the other alternative that was under consideration was to start using Twitter to meet Congressional reporting requirements…
Anything more than one page is passion.
That policy was the result of a request by Rep. Hank Johnson.
Seems he was worried that too much paper would capsize Washington D.C.
My sources indicate that Maxine Waters joined him in making the request, citing her concerns that she could not take the longer reports home with her for fear of making California break off and fall into the ocean.