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1: The President should develop a comprehensive strategy to heighten America’s ability to
prevent and protect against all forms of attack on the homeland, and to respond to such
attacks if prevention and protection fail. (p. 11)
2: The President should propose, and Congress should agree to create, a National
Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and
integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security. The Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should be a key building block in this effort. (p.
15)
3: The President should propose to Congress the transfer of the Customs Service, the
Border Patrol, and Coast Guard to the National Homeland Security Agency, while
preserving them as distinct entities. (p. 15)
4: The President should ensure that the National Intelligence Council: include homeland
security and asymmetric threats as an area of analysis; assign that portfolio to a National
Intelligence Officer; and produce National Intelligence Estimates on these threats. (p. 23)
5: The President should propose to Congress the establishment of an Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Homeland Security within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, reporting
directly to the Secretary. (p. 23)
6: The Secretary of Defense, at the President’s direction, should make homeland security a
primary mission of the National Guard, and the Guard should be organized, properly
trained, and adequately equipped to undertake that mission. (p. 25)
7: Congress should establish a special body to deal with homeland security issues, as has
been done with intelligence oversight. Members should be chosen for their expertise in
foreign policy, defense, intelligence, law enforcement, and appropriations. This body should
also include members of all relevant Congressional committees as well as ex-officio
members from the leadership of both Houses of Congress. (p. 28)
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125
Recapitalizing America’s Strengths in Science and Education
8: The President should propose, and the Congress should support, doubling the U.S.
government’s investment in science and technology R&D by 2010. (p. 32)
9: The President should empower his Science Advisor to establish non-military R&D
objectives that meet changing national needs, and to be responsible for coordinating budget
development within the relevant departments and agencies. (p. 34)
10: The President should propose, and the Congress should fund, the reorganization of the
national laboratories, providing individual laboratories with new mission goals that
minimize overlap. (p. 37)
11: The President should propose, and Congress should pass, a National Security Science
and Technology Education Act (NSSTEA) with four sections: reduced-interest loans and
scholarships for students to pursue degrees in science, mathematics, and engineering; loan
forgiveness and scholarships for those in these fields entering government or military
service; a National Security Teaching Program to foster science and math teaching at the K-
12 level; and increased funding for professional development for science and math teachers.
(p. 41)
12: The President should direct the Department of Education to work with the states to
devise a comprehensive plan to avert a looming shortage of quality teachers. This plan
should emphasize raising teacher compensation, improving infrastructure support,
reforming the certification process, and expanding existing programs targeted at districts
with especially acute problems. (p. 43)
13: The President and Congress should devise a targeted program to strengthen the
historically black colleges and universities in our country, and should particularly support
those that emphasize science, mathematics, and engineering. (p. 45)
Institutional Redesign
14: The President should personally guide a top-down strategic planning process and
delegate authority to the National Security Advisor to coordinate that process. (p. 48)
15: The President should prepare and present to the Congress an overall national security
budget to serve the critical goals that emerge from the NSC strategic planning process.
Separately, the President should continue to submit budgets for individual national security
departments and agencies for Congressional review and appropriation. (p. 49)
126
16: The National Security Council (NSC) should be responsible for advising the President
and for coordinating the multiplicity of national security activities, broadly defined to
include economic and domestic law enforcement activities as well as the traditional national
security agenda. The NSC Advisor and staff should resist the temptation to assume a
central policymaking and operational role. (p. 51)
17: The President should propose to the Congress that the Secretary of Treasury be made a
statutory member of the National Security Council. (p. 52)
18: The President should abolish the National Economic Council, distributing its domestic
economic policy responsibilities to the Domestic Policy Council and its international
economic responsibilities to the National Security Council. (p. 52)
19: The President should propose to the Congress a plan to reorganize the State
Department, creating five Under Secretaries, with responsibility for overseeing the regions
of Africa, Asia, Europe, Inter-America, and Near East/South Asia, and redefining the
responsibilities of the Under Secretary for Global Affairs. These new Under Secretaries
would operate in conjunction with the existing Under Secretary for Management. (p. 54)
20: The President should propose to the Congress that the U.S. Agency for International
Development be consolidated into the State Department. (p. 56)
21: The Secretary of State should give greater emphasis to strategic planning in the State
Department and link it directly to the allocation of resources through the establishment of a
Strategic Planning, Assistance, and Budget Office. (p. 56)
22: The President should ask Congress to appropriate funds to the State Department in a
single integrated Foreign Operations budget, which would include all foreign assistance
programs and activities as well as all expenses for personnel and operations. (p. 58)
23: The President should ensure that Ambassadors have the requisite area knowledge as
well as leadership and management skills to function effectively. He should therefore
appoint an independent, bipartisan advisory panel to the Secretary of State to vet
ambassadorial appointees, career and non-career alike. (p. 62)
24: The Secretary of Defense should propose to Congress a restructuring plan for the Office
of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy that would abolish the office of the Assistant
Secretary for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), and create a new
office of an Assistant Secretary dedicated to Strategy and Planning (S/P). (p. 64)
25: Based on a review of the core roles and responsibilities of the staffs of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the military services, and the CINCs, the Secretary of
Defense should reorganize and reduce those staffs by ten to fifteen percent. (p. 65)
127
26: The Secretary of Defense should establish a ten-year goal of reducing infrastructure
costs by 20 to 25 percent through outsourcing and privatizing as many DoD support
agencies as possible. (p. 66)
27: The Congress and the Secretary of Defense should move the Quadrennial Defense
Review to the second year of a Presidential term. (p. 68)
28: The Secretary of Defense should introduce a new process that would require the
Services and defense agencies to compete for the allocation of some resources within the
overall Defense budget. (p. 69)
29: The Secretary of Defense should establish and employ a two-track acquisition system,
one for major acquisitions and a second, “fast track” for a limited number of potential
breakthrough systems, especially those in the area of command and control. (p. 71)
30: The Secretary of Defense should foster innovation by directing a return to the pattern of
increased prototyping and testing of selected weapons and support systems. (p. 72)
31: Congress should implement two-year defense budgeting solely for the modernization
element of the DoD budget (R&D/procurement) because of its long-term character, and it
should expand the use of multiyear procurement. (p. 73)
32: Congress should modernize Defense Department auditing and oversight requirements
by rewriting relevant sections of U.S. Code, Title 10, and the Federal Acquisition
Regulations. (p. 75)
33: The Secretary of Defense should direct the DoD to shift from the threat-based 2MTW
force sizing process to one which measures requirements against recent operational activity
trends, actual intelligence estimates of potential adversaries’ capabilities, and national
security objectives once formulated in the new administration’s national security strategy.
(p. 76)
34: The Defense Department should devote its highest priority to improving and furthering
expeditionary capabilities. (p. 78)
35: The President should establish an Interagency Working Group on Space (IWGS) at the
National Security Council to coordinate all aspects of the nation’s space policy, and place on
the NSC staff those with the necessary expertise in this area. (p. 80)
36: The President should order the setting of national intelligence priorities through
National Security Council guidance to the Director of Central Intelligence. (p. 83)
reply to post by thehoneycomb
In this Commission's view, the inadequacies of our systems of research and education pose a greater threat to U.S. national security over the next quarter century than any potential conventional war that we might imagine. American national leadership must understand these deficiencies as threats to national security. If we do not invest heavily and wisely in rebuilding these two core strengths, America will be incapable of maintaining its global position long into the 21st century.
This Caught my eye