Home ›› 18 Feb 2023 ›› Opinion
It’s early in the new Congress, but lawmakers are already hotly debating spending and debt levels. As they do so, they risk losing track of an important issue hiding in plain sight: massive Pentagon waste. At least in theory, combating such excess could offer members of both parties common ground as they start the new budget cycle. But there are many obstacles to pursuing such a commonsense agenda.
Pentagon waste is a longstanding issue in desperate need of meaningful action. Last November, the Department of Defense once again failed to pass even a basic audit, as it had several times before. In fact, independent auditors weren’t even able to assess the Pentagon’s full financial picture because they couldn’t gather all the necessary information to complete an evaluation. In some ways, that should have been devastating, the equivalent of a child receiving an incomplete on an end-of-year report card. No less alarming, the Pentagon couldn’t even account for about 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets. Yet the last Congress still approved $858 billion in defense programs for fiscal year 2023, a full $45 billion more than even the Biden administration requested.
Spending levels aside, poor financial management has a serious negative impact on both service members and taxpayers. Last month, for example, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the Pentagon can’t account for at least $220 billion worth of its property, including such basics as ammunition, missiles, torpedoes, and their component parts. For its part, Congress (and so the average taxpayer) doesn’t have the faintest idea how much it’s spent on weapons or their components distributed to contractors for maintenance and upgrades. Worse, the GAO reports that the $220 billion in unaccounted-for equipment and parts is “likely significantly understated.”
Such irresponsible financial management also applies to Pentagon weapons purchases, creating another set of problems. The Department of Defense commits staggering numbers of taxpayer dollars to new weapons programs without doing its due diligence, all too often resulting in dysfunctional systems. The GAO has reported on this issue for 20 years and yet there’s been little discernible change in Pentagon behavior.
There is a better way, though. For example, in its most recent Annual Weapons Systems Assessment Report, the GAO notes that obtaining basic information at critical points in the weapons-buying process produces better cost and delivery outcomes. In defense-speak, this is called “knowledge-based acquisition.” Of course, requiring crucial information about a program before proceeding to its development stage should be a no-brainer. Yet the Pentagon has wasted untold billions of dollars on ill-functioning weaponry like the F-35 combat aircraft by proceeding to the development stage without faintly adequate information.
And the status quo guarantees future disasters like the F-35. According to the GAO, more than half of the major defense-acquisition programs it reviewed in fiscal year 2022 “did not demonstrate critical technologies in a realistic environment before beginning system development.” That’s like buying a house without checking whether the water pressure is adequate or the roof leaks — or, in the case of the F-35, a few thousand houses. An independent assessment of that fighter jet in fiscal year 2021 found more than 800 unresolved deficiencies, six of which are so serious that they may cause death or serious injury to those operating the plane, or critically restrict its capabilities in a combat setting. In the 20 years since the program began, the Pentagon has yet to approve that deeply deficient, wildly expensive plane for full production. Put another way, it has already spent nearly $200 billion on a system that may never actually be fully ready for combat.
Aside from the fact that the F-35’s engine doesn’t work, the main reason the Pentagon hasn’t gone full speed ahead on production is that even its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, can’t assess the aircraft’s performance. Why? Because the company hasn’t finished developing the simulator required to properly test it. Still, the money keeps flowing and, by current estimates, the program’s lifecycle cost will exceed $1.7 trillion, making it one of the most expensive weapon programs in Pentagon history.
Pentagon waste is, of course, nothing new. Still, the need to trim the fat only grows more urgent as this country faces mounting security challenges ranging from the increasing devastation of climate change to strategic competition with other powers. The war in Ukraine is already straining the Pentagon’s buying system in striking new ways. As the need to get weapons out the door quickly becomes its number one priority, its penchant for wasting taxpayer dollars will undoubtedly only grow worse.
Still, there are reforms that could quickly improve the situation. There’s no need for Congress or the Pentagon to reinvent the wheel, since the steps toward making weapons-buying more accountable have been clear for years — as have the roadblocks along the way.
One of the biggest obstacles to reform is that so many lawmakers have vested interests in a hands-off approach to the Pentagon budget. As a start, striking numbers of them have instant conflicts of interest with respect to the defense industry, since they own stock in major weapons-making firms. Those companies make major campaign contributions to keep the lawmakers in their camp. Open Secrets.org, a group that tracks money in politics, reported, for instance, that, in the 2020 election cycle, the arms sector contributed $50 million to political candidates and their committees.
To mask such obvious conflicts of interest and their wasteful consequences, lawmakers generally prefer to change the subject. When the Pentagon budget is threatened with even modest reductions, they routinely trot out tired arguments about how such enormous sums create jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Forget that the data shows education spending produces more than twice as many jobs, while clean energy and healthcare generate 50% more. In short, taxpayers would be far better off if Congress repurposedsignificant amounts of Pentagon spending for more productive endeavors.
Beyond long-overdue campaign finance reform and a congressional stock-trading ban, lawmakers have a lot of ground to cover when it comes to making Pentagon spending more accountable. The GAO has clear recommendations for ways to mitigate the risks and challenges of prospective weapons programs before making investment decisions. It has also recommended developing significantly better ways of assessing “military readiness” (the fitness of units to engage in combat). Too often, an alleged lack of readiness is used as another excuse to further pump up the Pentagon budget. The Congressional Research Service has, however, pointed out that Congress doesn’t even have a standard definition of military readiness, so how can legislators begin to evaluate the real-world impact of the hundreds of billions of dollars they routinely authorize for the Department of Defense?
Counterpunch
