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- Parte de Records of the Office of the Chief of Staff (Clinton Administration), Lynn Cutler's Files
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OCR Page 1 of 57QUADRENNIAL DEFENSE REVIEW (QDR)
QDR
As the QDR entered its final stages, the President was briefed twice by Secretary Cohen and
General Shalikashvili on its conceptual underpinnings and principal force structure and
programmatic recommendations. Although there are a lot of details to the QDR report -- and
the President has not gone over them line-by-line -- he was briefed on and approved the
basic elements of the report.
The NSC staff and OMB participated as observers at a senior level throughout the review and
will remain involved in QDR-related follow-up as it pertains to budgetary issues and as
revised program plans for FY-99 and onward are developed.
Urge Congress to work closely with the Administration in using the QDR as the first step on
the road to shaping the U.S. military to respond to the diverse challenges of the twenty-first
century. As Secretary Cohen said last week, this is an evolutionary process -- a process that
involves making hard choices.
BRAC:
Why are we closing more bases, particularly as the 1995 Commission on Roles and Missions
recommended a six-year hiatus in base closures?
The Joint Chiefs have strongly urged that we close more excess base infrastructure. Since the
end of the Cold War we have decreased our active force by 33 percent. The reduction in
domestic base infrastructure has been only 21 percent. After completing the force structure
reductions under the QDR, the force will have decreased by 36 percent.
As these figures demonstrate, it is clear that DoD is spending an increasing percentage of its
funds on overhead -- funds that can be used to modernize the force, to replace aging Cold
War era equipment and to develop future systems.
Across the Federal government we are restructuring to achieve greater efficiencies and
savings -- and the Department of Defense cannot be exempt. The President has said
that he is supportive of the QDR decisions and we will work with Congress to fashion
appropriate legislation to guide future BRAC rounds so as to bring our base structure more in
line with our force structure.
How can the President propose more closures when he "saved McClellan and Kelly?"
The 1995 BRAC decision was a particularly difficult one for the President. Only after
receiving written assurances from Alan Dixon, the BRAC Commission Chairman, that the
Commission intended to provide DoD the flexibility to privatize at Kelly and McClellan, did
the President agree to forward the BRAC recommendations to Congress.
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