While much of today’s coverage of Senator Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing centered on several contentious exchanges with GOP senators,  slipped in during the middle of the hearing was reference to an ongoing concern in the foreign policy community that DoD has claimed too many of the jobs that State once had.

Hagel, in response to a reference by Sentor Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, about past comments Hagel had made, made it clear that he believes DoD has engaged in a bit of mission creep as part of the U.S.’ engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the general areas, and I mentioned this this morning, where we have pushed down on the military the last 12 years to do things that usually are done out of the State Department — aid-type programs and exchange programs, helping civilian-type programs in areas. That was all given to the military — not all, but a great deal of it was given to the military at the time we were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, the military has taken on a tremendous volume of assignments and funding that goes with that. That needs to be sorted through.

Hagel’s comments fall in line with what Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro said in my recent sit-down with him.

I think that coming off the Iraq war, and the shift in administrations, there was a desire to rebalance the relationship between the State Department and the Defense Department, to put the State Department in its rightful role as the leading agency for U.S. foreign policy. There had been, in the post- 9/11 era, understandably a migration of some authorities and leadership to the Defense Department. This administration decided that it wanted to rebalance and put the State Department in the lead.

That Hagel would agree with the administration’s efforts to shift some responsibilities back to State is unsurprising.  But what is worthy of note about Hagel’s comments is that they came in reference to bloat in the Pentagon budget, the premise of Blunts questioning.  Shifting the cost of various tasks to the State Department would reduce the Pentagon’s costs (if only marginally given the size of most aid type programs).  As far as the taxpayer is concerned, the move wouldn’t reduce government spending.

But the potential consequence would be a straining of State resources to handle additional responsibilities.  It’s unlikely that any government agency is going to see a significant increase in funding.  If State is handed back responsibilities, the money for those programs will likely have to come from somewhere else within the agency’s existing budget.

There is the Global Contingency Security Fund, which shifts some funding from DoD to State, but it’s unlikely to cover anything larger.

In the new era of fiscal austerity, even giving up authority can be appealing if you can give the cost to someone else.