Airmen have role in cutting service budget - Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Airmen have role in cutting service budget

More than 100 ideas from airmen about how to cut the Air Force budget demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the seriousness of the country’s financial situation. They also show they’re willing to make sacrifices to get things straight.

They want imminent danger pay only when they’re really in imminent danger and think special retention bonuses could be reduced. They think working-age retirees should pony up higher Tricare fees and the Air Force should clamp down on official travel by holding more videoconferences. And they question the value of ceremonial luxuries, like military bands and the Thunderbird flight demonstration team.

The Air Force’s 2011 budget is $170.8 billion; the likely amount for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, is $166.3 billion. While a $4.5 billion decrease is a good start, undoubtedly there is still more that can be taken out.

Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz has 12 teams looking at the service’s core missions to identify needs and expenditures and propose what Schwartz calls “trades.” The aim is to find the Air Force’s share of at least $400 billion in cuts. But odds are, even that won’t be enough.

Good leaders use every resource available. Schwartz is leaning on his commanders to identify programs and budget lines they can do without; those commanders, in turn, ought to be asking their airmen for input. Many will blanch at the ideas airmen are willing to entertain — closing the commissaries, for example. But bold strokes are what it will take to make such big cuts without sacrificing the Air Force’s core competencies in air and space.

Schwartz himself notes that nibbling at the edges doesn’t work, and that the failure to be more aggressive last year prolonged the pain of cuts this year.

No one really wants to cut the budget. But airmen will be more willing to get on board with change if they are part of the discussion, rather than merely the recipients of bad news when it’s all over.