Battle of the bands

The Pentagon's battle of the bands

Music in the military is a storied tradition, but some lawmakers say $437 million in yearly spending is too much.

By Ellen Mitchell

Live music in the military has become a nearly half-billion-dollar-a-year road show. But even some of the Pentagon’s top supporters in Congress say it’s time to cut the volume.

From their humble origins in the American Revolution’s fife-and-drum corps, the U.S. military’s musical ventures have grown to include thousands of service members and at least 137 bands — some of whose members are outfitted with $11,000 flutes and $12,000 tubas. That has placed them in the crosshairs of lawmakers who say it makes no sense to lavish this kind of money on music when the Pentagon is scaling back combat troops.

Entertainment is “just not the role of the military," said Rep. Martha McSally, a hawkish Arizona Republican and retired Air Force colonel who serves on the Armed Services Committee. She and other lawmakers are ramping up the pressure with new legislation that would require the Pentagon to determine whether it could ease cuts in combat units by reducing the number of musicians.

McSally told POLITICO that military musicians fulfill important ceremonial tasks and protocols — presidential inaugurations, parades and other public events and, of course, funerals. But she can no longer support such large expenditures “when we’re at a place where we’re having this conversation about being at a crisis level of readiness and force structure and manning for our military.”

“It used to just really irritate me when I would be going to an event, say for a holiday party that a general officer is hosting, and we would have military men and women in uniform entertaining us,” she added. “I used to be uncomfortable with it — that we’ve got these enlisted troops whose job was to entertain generals and their guests at various events.”

For other lawmakers, though, those are fighting words.

"Military bands are vital to recruiting, retention and community relations, and they provide patriotic and inspirational music to instill in soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines the will to fight and win," said Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican who sits on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Musicians are as embedded in U.S. military culture as order and discipline — whether exemplified by the patriotic flourishes of Marine composer John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" or by “Pershing's Own," the elite Army band established during World War I to match the pomp and circumstance of America’s European allies.

During the Civil War, Union Gen. Philip Sheridan famously ordered his musicians to play their instruments loudly and "never mind if a bullet goes through a trombone, or even a trombonist, now and then.”

But that storied tradition now comes with a hefty price tag. According to Pentagon data from fiscal 2015, the last time the Defense Department did a full inventory, the military spends at least $437 million a year on musicians, their instruments, special uniforms, travel and related costs.

That marks a steady rise from previous years, even as the Pentagon insists the services have cut a sizable number of musical troupes. By some official estimates, it's now spending $100 million more a year than in 2011.

The Army, by far, has the largest musical contingent, with a total of 99 bands and approximately 4,350 total musical personnel across its active-duty, National Guard and Reserve forces. The Air Force is second, with 15 bands and 800 personnel, followed by the Marine Corps with 12 bands and 750 personnel and the Navy's 11 bands and 600 musicians.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Mark Wright asserted that all four military branches have cut the number of bands in recent years, but acknowledges the cuts have done little to rein in the overall cost — largely because the schedule of events at which military musicians perform has not diminished much.

"With band reductions, operations costs for current bands may increase since remaining bands have to travel more often to cover the workload of eliminated bands," he explained.

The cost for band instruments alone has turned some heads.

A search on the Federal Business Opportunities website turns up dozens of examples of top-dollar contracts for Army instruments in particular.

Among them is a $33,000 award for three flutes in April 2015, $12,000 for a tuba this past March, and $88,500 for a concert-grade Steinway piano for the chapel at Fort Riley, Kan. That was purchased in 2013, at the height of across-the-board budget cuts.

The exorbitant instrument purchases, according to Wright, are justified because “most band members use the same instrument for years if not their entire career."

Now, some key lawmakers want a much more rigorous scrub of the whole ensemble.

The House this week passed legislation that requires the Government Accountability Office to do a wholesale review of the cost and size of military bands — with an eye toward transferring some of those slots to combat units, especially in the Army, which is undergoing reductions in a number of fighting units to align with smaller overall budgets.

"While the committee provides the Department of Defense with a wide latitude of authority for the military services to execute the end-strength reductions that are continuing through fiscal year 2017, the committee is concerned by the prioritization of some military units," according to the House Armed Services Committee report on the National Defense Authorization Act.

"The committee believes," it added, "that the services may be able to conserve end strength by reducing the number of military bands."

The review by GAO is due by February.

The bill also directs Defense Secretary Ash Carter to take a detailed inventory of military bands, study the feasibility of combining some and report back by Dec. 1.

"At a minimum, the briefing shall include: the number of military bands, by service, and their location; the cost of military bands, including recruitment, training, facilities and transportation; the number of service members assigned to military bands; the history of reductions in military bands over the past five years; and the feasibility of combining military bands at joint locations," according to the armed services panel.

Scrutiny of the expenditures has been building for several years. President Barack Obama's first defense secretary, Robert Gates, pointed out on a number of occasions that the United States has more military musicians than diplomats. And the military branches have canceled some recent musical events, citing budget reasons.

But previous efforts to scale back the overall budget for military bands got heavy push back inside the ranks and on Capitol Hill, including two attempts in the House to cap annual spending at $200 million a year.

In 2011, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) proposed a $200 million spending limit on military bands, down from nearly $325 million the Pentagon estimated was being spent to support them that year. The amendment was voted down.

McCollum tried and failed again the following year, when the spending grew to $388 million, proposing a similar amendment to the House defense appropriations bill. She asserted that DoD had spent $1.55 billion on military bands, musical performances and concerts over the previous four years.

“Is the United States really going to borrow money from China and other foreign countries so the Defense Department can spend billions of dollars for its 140 bands?” she asked in a floor speech at the time. “How does this enhance our national security?”

Besides tradition, however, supporters view military musicians as a critical link between the men and women in uniform and those they protect.

The bands and their costs are necessary because music can "facilitate the accomplishment of national objectives at home, overseas and in an expeditionary environment,” said Wright, the Pentagon spokesman.

That is “not intended to indicate that we swayed an ally to join a war with us in World War II or anything because of it,” he added. Rather, it speaks to using music as a unifier.

“We don't want to become separated and mysterious to the U.S. public,” he said. “We want them to understand us and see us for what we are; we are them, as well as defenders of our common nation.”

Rep. Carter, who argued against capping spending on military bands, added: "As we are still engaged in a war and peacekeeping missions around the world, military bands cover the departure and homecomings for many units, and when needed will cover funerals of our fallen warriors, a tradition that means so much to our military families."

But as Congress grapples with how to finance many military priorities that are strapped for resources, those like McSally believe it's time for the Pentagon to face the music. The military just has too many bands and too many performances, especially if they come at the expense of more important tasks.

"One could make an argument that these various military bands are nice to do and important to do," she said. "But then there’s the core competencies of our military, of the things that we have to do, what we must do, and what we’re responsible for. And it just not seem logical to me that they are making the case that they have this manning crisis while we’re still having personnel in these positions."