WASHINGTON -- When there wasn't enough money in the domestic budget for an increase in spending on breast cancer research sought by women's groups in 1992, Sen. Tom Harkin created a novel source of funding -- the defense budget.
The Iowa Democrat, who lost two sisters to the disease and is a staunch supporter of cancer research, tacked a $210 million research program onto the fiscal 1993 defense appropriations bill, and Congress approved it.
And so, for the past three years, the Pentagon has run a breast-cancer research program from Fort Detrick, Md., that it acknowledges has no military application. The cumulative cost: $410 million.
Breast cancer research is one of dozens of "nondefense" Defense Department programs that are being questioned as the new Republican majority in Congress seeks a bigger bang for the defense dollar while trying to scale back the federal budget deficit.
The overall defense budget fell 25 percent between 1990 and 1994. But "nondefense" spending more than tripled, from $3.6 billion to $13 billion, according to a study by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Much of that money, critics say, has been spent on civilian programs and congressional pet projects.
This year, $11 billion (enough to buy five B-2 Stealth bombers or two new aircraft carriers) is being spent on what the Congressional Research Service describes as "activities that some may consider peripheral to . . . traditional military missions -- though others may disagree."
That carefully hedged description reflects a dispute over what is or isn't "nondefense" spending by the Pentagon, and how much of it should be in the defense budget.
Should $950,000 of the Pentagon's budget be spent on Memorial Day and July Fourth concerts this year? Was it the Pentagon's role to pay $9 million for security for last year's World Cup soccer games? Should the Defense Department be spending $15 million on the development of electric vehicles?
Budget-minded critics say no.
They point to a long list of other nontraditional Pentagon outlays that have boosted the defense budget over recent years, including: $1.6 million for the Oregon Museum of Science and History; $2 million for homeless shelters; $3 million for urban youth programs; $3 million for the Boy Scout Jamboree; $3 million for the Special Olympics; $5 million for a coal utilization center; $6 million for a natural gas fuel cell demonstration; and $5 million for the Solomon Islands parliament building.
"A lot of these have been tacked year by year onto a huge budget and hidden from view," said John Luddy, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation. "Let's have what I call truth-in-budgeting."
Scrutiny of the Pentagon's "nondefense" spending will intensify next week when the Defense Department presents its fiscal 1996 budget. Republicans question whether the Pentagon should fund environmental programs ($5.5 billion this year), conversion of military industries to civilian production ($1.5 billion), medical and other research ($1.5 billion), counter-drug operations ($721 million), or nuclear disarmament aid to the former Soviet republics ($400 million).
"We think there is a high percentage of the defense budget that is real
ly nondefense stuff," said Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, a senior Republican on the Budget Committee.
The GOP wants to eliminate such programs or transfer them to departments where they more logically fit, such as State, Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency.
'Defense by other means'
Pentagon officials say that some of the targeted programs, like industrial conversion, are defense-related, and that others, like environmental cleanup, are required by law as well. Still others, like helping the Russians disarm their nuclear arsenal, are in the national interests.
Defense Secretary William J. Perry strongly defends many of the programs as "defense by other means."
"It would be tragically shortsighted if we scale back on these programs," he told the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week. "They are solid investments in the nation's security."
Mr. Perry did not mention the breast cancer research program in his speech to the mayors, but it offers a case study in how the Pentagon's budget has been laden with "nondefense" spending.
The Harkin program, funded at $150 million this year, is not the only federally backed breast cancer research. The government is also spending $350 million on breast cancer research at the National Cancer Institute.
"No one is against more money for breast cancer research," said Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, who is lobbying to keep the research program in the Pentagon budget. "I think the opposition comes from the broad-based support for streamlining the defense budget and getting rid of nondefense funding."
To date, the Army has awarded more than 400 breast cancer research grants -- 22 of them totaling $7.3 million to Maryland institutions, including $3.3 million to the Johns Hopkins University and $1.6 million to the University of Maryland.
But even the Maryland-based Army command, which manages the program, acknowledges that the research is not defense-related.
'We didn't solicit this money'
"The medical research we do is supposed to have an application to battlefield medicine," said Chuck Dasey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick. "It is not our position that this [breast cancer] research is something essential for battlefield medicine. We didn't solicit this money, and we aren't trying to perpetuate the Army's program in breast cancer research."
A Pentagon official, who asked not to be named, said that defense policy-makers had "reservations about the appropriateness" of having a breast cancer research program under their control, but that the research probably would not be on a list of cuts being prepared for submission to Congress on Monday.
Most of the programs the Pentagon will propose to cut are likely to be pet projects of lawmakers -- "pork," to use a word favored by the Heritage Foundation.
The foundation cites the $20 million funding in 1993 for the National Defense Center for Environmental Excellence in Johnstown, Pa., hometown of the former Democratic chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, Rep. John P. Murtha.
The center -- which develops waste-reduction strategies for the armed services and industry -- provides about 150 jobs for Mr. Murtha's constituents, said his press secretary, Brad Clemenson.
Another constituency that has benefited from nondefense spending is Spokane County, Wash., home of the former Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas S. Foley, who was defeated in the November election. When the new $1.5 million Windsor Elementary School gymnasium and community center opened in October, Mr. Foley was on hand to share in the local pride and joy.
But the improvements were not financed by local property taxes. They were funded by the Pentagon. The reason: Mr. Foley successfully proposed a special defense appropriation, noting that three out of four children at Windsor school were from families at the nearby Fairchild Air Force Base.