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ownership benefits for all who qualify, but especially for career and retired service members. Taken as a package, such changes will help bring the best people into the armed service and persuade quality personnel to serve longer in order to secure greater rewards for their service.

While these enhancements are critical they will not, by themselves, resolve the quality recruitment and retention problems of the Services. We therefore recommend significant modifications to military personnel legislation governing officer and enlisted career management, retirement, and compensation—giving Service Secretaries more authority and flexibility to adapt their personnel systems and career management to meet 21st century requirements. This should include flexible compensation and retirement plans, exemption from "up-or-out" mandates, and reform of personnel systems to facilitate fluid movement of personnel. If we do not decentralize and modernize the governing personnel legislation, no military reform or transformation is possible. We call for an Executive-Legislative working group to monitor, evaluate and share information about the testing and implementation of these recommendations. With bipartisan cooperation, our military will remain one of this nation's most treasured institutions and our safeguard in the changing world ahead.

The Role of Congress

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hile Congress has mandated many changes to a host of Executive departments and agencies over the years, it has not fundamentally reviewed its own role in national security policy. Moreover, it has not reformed its own structure since 1949. At present, for example, every major defense program must be voted upon no fewer than eighteen times each year by an array of committees and subcommittees. This represents a very poor use of time for busy members of the Executive and Legislative Branches.

To address these deficiencies, the Commission first recommends that the Congressional leadership conduct a thorough bicameral, bipartisan review of the Legislative Branch's relationship to national security and foreign policy. The House Speaker, Majority, and Minority leaders and the Senate Majority and Minority leaders must work with the President and his top aides to bring proposed reforms to this Congress by the beginning of its second session.

From that basis, Congressional and Executive Branch leaders must build programs to encourage members to acquire knowledge and experience in national security. These programs should include ongoing education, greater opportunities for serious overseas travel, more legislature-to-legislature exchanges, and greater participation in wargames.

Greater fluency in national security matters must be matched by structural reforms. A comprehensive review of the Congressional committee structure is needed to ensure that it reflects the complexity of 21" century security challenges and of U.S. national security priorities. Specifically we recommend merging appropriations subcommittees with their respective authorizing committees so that the new merged committees will authorize and appropriate within the same bill. This should decrease the bureaucracy of the budget process and allow more time to be devoted to the oversight of national security policy.

An effective Congressional role in national security also requires ongoing ExecutiveLegislative consultation and coordination. The Executive Branch must ensure a sustained effort in consultation and devote resources to it. For its part, Congress must make consultation a higher priority, in part by forming a permanent consultative group composed of the Congressional

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leadership and the Chairpersons and Ranking Members of the main committees involved in national security. This will form the basis for sustained dialogue and greater support in times of crisis.

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The Commission notes, in conclusion, that some of its recommendations will save money, while others call for more expenditure. We have not tried to "balance the books" among our recommendations, nor have we held financial implications foremost in mind during our work. We consider any money that may be saved a second-order benefit. We consider the provision of additional resources to national security, where necessary, to be investments, not costs, in first-order national priorities.

Finally, we strongly urge the new President and the Congressional leadership to establish some mechanism to oversee the implementation of the recommendations proffered here. Once some mechanism is chosen, the President must ensure that responsibility for implementing the recommendations of this Commission be given explicitly to senior personnel in both the Executive and Legislative Branches of government. The press of daily obligations is such that unless such delegation is made, and those given responsibility for implementation are held accountable for their tasks, the necessary reforms will not occur. The stakes are high. We of this Commission believe that many thousands of American lives, U.S. leadership among the community of nations, and the fate of U.S. national security itself are at risk unless the President and the Congress join together to implement the recommendations set forth in this report.

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