FIGHTING GREEN: HOW CONGRESS AND THE PENTAGON MAKE DEFENSE POLICY

Katherine Blakeley

2017

Abstract

Fighting Green examines how Congress and the Pentagon make defense policy, using Congressional attempts to influence the Pentagon’s use of energy between FY 2004 - FY 2013 as a lens. Congress’ role in shaping military and defense policy falls into a lacuna between international relations and Americanists’ studies of domestic policy. Far from abdicating its power and prerogatives, Congress in fact exerts substantial influence on defense policy through the annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The assured and routinized annual passage of the NDAA make it a vehicle for substantive oversight and policymaking by the Congressional defense committees and policy entrepreneurs, but this legislative action and oversight remains sub rosa, rather than triggering broader public debates of the problems and potential solutions.

The first half of this dissertation focuses on Congress and the unique legislative vehicle of the NDAA. Narrative case studies of the legislative history of selected provisions illustrate how defense policymaking functions in practice. Quantitative analysis of the origination, content, and success or failure of legislative provisions related to DOD’s energy use provides a fuller analysis of how defense policymaking works, its characteristics, and its limitations. Successful defense policymaking tends to be incremental, uncontroversial, advance a clear defense policy or national security interest, and not require appropriated funds, suggesting that what I term “small-bore defense policymaking” as a successful avenue for defense policymaking. The balance of power lies with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees members and their staffs, but the unique role of the NDAA as a will-pass bill increases the incentive for party leaders to add non-germane policy riders, in a modified inside-leadership game.

The second half of this dissertation follows the defense energy provisions from the prior chapters into the Pentagon, evaluating their implementation and ultimate impact, with implications for Congressional policymaking, the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch, the role of partisanship, and the scope of the defense bureaucracy to shape and attenuate Congressional policy actions.

How has Congress responded to recessions during the era of presidential/executive power? My dissertation explores this question through the analysis of an original dataset and case studies to examine economic policymaking in Congress during recessions in the post war era. Four findings are the result of this study. First, while both Congress and the president were more evenly matched from 1946 to 1974, the legislative initiative shifted to Congress during recessions since 1974. Second, congressional responses to recessions tilted heavily towards targeted group benefits. That is, Congress distributed benefits to groups much more often than it did to geographic areas or the general public. Third, the magnitude of benefits Congress distributed during recessions increased substantially after 1974 when measured in real terms. Fourth, Congress has increasingly used taxes and the private sector, rather than a former emphasis on federal spending and the private sector, when distributing benefits to individuals since 1974.

My dissertation makes a two-part argument. First, it argues that the organizational structure of Congress helps explains these patterns in congressional behavior. Congressional initiative in the legislative process and how Congress made economic policy during this period depended in part on whether power in committees was concentrated or not, decision-making on spending levels, taxation levels, and regulation was concentrated or not, and whether committee chairs or the Speaker held power over floor scheduling in the House. Second, my dissertation argues that party control of Congress impacted how Congress made economic policy during recession. Congress only used taxes to distribute benefits when the Republican party controlled at least one chamber and the benefits it distributed were on average larger. When controlled by the Democratic party, in contrast, Congress used a mix of tax cuts, the private sector, and federal spending to distribute benefits and the benefits it distributed were on average smaller.

What is the relationship between the voice of political expression and the vote that expresses this voice at the ballot box? How did a political philosophy develop under U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence that put voice and vote values into conflict, ultimately favoring the corporate voice over that of the individual vote? I argue that the voice-vote dilemma is a case of the larger tension between liberty and equality in U.S. liberalism, as expressed by disagreements on the Supreme Court. Although the relationship between liberty and equality in U.S. liberalism throughout history has been multifaceted, the Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC reflects a swing towards the dominance of libertarian values over egalitarian values on the Court, a built-in bias towards a uniquely exceptional notion of liberty that overwhelms egalitarian values to such an extent that meaningful campaign finance reform has stood little chance of success.

The emergency of 9/11 is gone. Terrorism is no longer front of mind for most Americans. Active shooter atrocities and white supremacist violence have become more salient as domestic threats. And yet, domestic counterterrorism programs and policies are business as usual. This dissertation examines those policies and the connections between the national and local governments in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. It explores national policies in policing, law enforcement and emergency preparedness and whether their cumulative effects constitute a new relationship between the federal, state, and local governments, a relationship that marks a turn in an important area of American government and constitutionalism. The project argues that the symptom of domestic warfare, a result of Bush-era War on Terror policies, is a systemic shift in the power balance in the American state and its federalist governmental structure. The concept of national security federalism is used as a general framework for gauging institutional change with the federal government’s push to centralize its prosecution of the War. The empirical focus is on military equipment exchange and intelligence production, primarily driven by the Department of Homeland Security. Evidence suggests that counterterrorism preparedness and intelligence capabilities are high in the cities and counties examined as a result. Based on in-depth interviews with a wide range of officials, security experts and community stakeholders, the study offers insights into how bureaucratic, elected and private sector actors pursue their work and how they conceive of themselves and their organizations vis a vis the mandates they are given, as well as the ones they adopt. The study finds that local institutions and actors have indeed changed how they operate, both ceding local power to the central government and taking for themselves some federal authorities at the expense of public accountability. It also finds very few cities attempting to reclaim sovereignty through privacy policy, unearthing interesting activities and combinations in the process.