HASC Chairman to DOD: Rewrite QDR

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) called on the Defense Department to “re-write and re-submit” the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, which was officially released Tuesday along with the President’s Fiscal 2015 budget request. McKeon said the review “should be immensely valuable to planners and senior commanders,” but falls short because it places too much emphasis on politics and too little emphasis on policy. “For that reason, I will require [DOD] to re-write and re-submit a compliant report,” McKeon said in a March 4 statement. He added, “In defiance of the law [sequestration], this QDR provides no insight into what moderate-to-low risk strategy would be, is clearly budget driven, and is shortsighted.” The QDR, like the Pentagon’s five-year spending plan, assumes sequester will not continue beyond Fiscal 2016 without additional mitigating factors. McKeon has said that’s not the case. “It allows the President to duck the consequences of the deep defense cuts he has advocated and leaves us all wondering what the true future costs of those cuts will be,” he noted.