By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 28, 2014 – Contrary to some news reports,
there are no plans to close military commissaries, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff said.
But Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey added that the budget
environment is forcing the department to look for savings anywhere possible.
The chairman first addressed this issue during his Facebook
town hall meeting last month.
The Joint Staff did not ask the Defense Commissary Agency to
come up with a contingency plan to close 100 percent of U.S. commissaries,
senior military officials said. Officials did ask the Defense Commissary Agency
for a range of options, including how the system would operate with reduced or
no taxpayer subsidies, the chairman said, noting that military exchanges work
on this system and that the same potential exists with commissaries. In the
most recent year, the Defense Commissary Agency received $1.5 billion in subsidies.
"But we haven't made any decisions," the chairman
said. "We've got to drive toward greater efficiencies, and this is just
one of the potential areas."
The Bipartisan Budget Act, which President Barack Obama
signed earlier this month, alleviated some of the sequester pressure on the
department through fiscal year 2015. But the Budget Reduction Act of 2011 is
still law, and sequester-level spending cuts will be back in play in fiscal
2016, unless Congress changes the law.
Still, the chairman said, the department must find ways to
ensure that service members are prepared to perform their missions.
"We're well aware of the need for acquisition reform,
as well as the need to reduce unnecessary infrastructure and retire unneeded
weapons systems," Dempsey said. "All of the institutional reforms are
intended to produce a single outcome: the best-trained and best-equipped
service men and women on the planet."
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