Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth Announces Three New Memos To Reduce 'Bloated Bureacracy' At The Pentagon

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Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth announces three new memos to reduce spending at the Pentagon.

Transcript

00:00When President Trump asked me to serve as the Secretary of Defense,

00:03he gave all of us and me the mission of restoring the warrior ethos.

00:09And we're focused on that every single day.

00:12Now, one way we're doing this is by finding out what works at DOD and also what doesn't work.

00:19And that begins by finding out where we are spending taxpayer dollars.

00:24Now, part of what we've uncovered is that the Defense Department has become

00:28very much over-reliant on management consultants and contractors.

00:33We found that we likely have more contractors than we have civilian employees.

00:39And many of them, those contractors, are making more money than our career senior executive employees.

00:46To give you one example, the Air Force, working as a team with DOGE,

00:52cut that department's largest management consulting program.

00:55This joint team conducted a line-by-line audit of over 50 contract vehicles,

01:02saving a billion dollars on the current program, a billion,

01:06and canceling its $3.8 billion extension, which we all know inevitably would have been spent.

01:13These, combined with other reviews over the past two weeks,

01:17have resulted in, get this, more than $5 billion in savings for the Department of Defense.

01:24Yes, $5 billion in addition to the over $5 billion we've already found in working with DOGE.

01:30So that brings the tally now to over $10 billion in real savings at the Department of Defense working with DOGE.

01:37And we're just getting started.

01:39I've empowered the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Steve Feinberg,

01:43a man with decades of practical executive experience in the private sector,

01:47to work with the services and DOGE to review all of our consulting contracts.

01:53We need to replace wasteful spending in favor of a culture focused on, get this,

01:59actual financial responsibility and stewardship,

02:02so that our limited funds are spent better on, you know,

02:06things like health care and mission-related programs for our warfighters and their families.

02:11And that's why today I'm signing three separate memos dealing with reforming the Pentagon,

02:18reducing bureaucracy, and moving money toward the needs of our warfighters.

02:23The first memo, and all three are right in front of me right here,

02:25responsibly reduces the number of management consultants and contractors.

02:30Again, these are consultants, not frontline fighters.

02:34They're giving us PowerPoints that we need less of,

02:37and we need more actual application.

02:40Second, it lays out, the second memo lays out,

02:43needed reforms to the department's usage of executive assistance.

02:47Think about proper ratios.

02:50And the third, restructures the department's operational and test evaluation office,

02:55which will make testing and fielding weapons more efficient,

03:00so that warfighters get what they need faster.

03:02Again, we worked with the services.

03:04These are changes, especially that last one, that they really want in order to go faster

03:08with the capabilities that they need.

03:11So we're committed to reducing bloated bureaucracy and wasteful spending in favor of increased lethality.

03:17That's a trade-off I will take every single day.

03:21Converting consultants into combat power.

03:24That's what we're doing here at the Defense Department.

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