The 10 Most Blatantly Wasteful Defense Items In The Recent $1.8 Trillion Spending Bill
Here are the 10 most blatantly wasteful defense items in the recent $1.8 trillion spending bill.
Preamble: Senator John McCain knows only too well about defense waste – as a decorated Navy pilot and now Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During passage of the recent $1.8 billion overall spending bill,, with $572 billion for defense, McCain rose on the Senate floor “to call attention to the triumph of pork barrel parochialism in this year’s Omnibus Appropriation bill.” He cast a lonely but striking “no” vote on the bill. As he described the passage process: “here we stand with a 2000-page omnibus appropriations bill, crafted in secret with no debate, which most of us are seeing for the first time this morning.” It was clear that neither he, nor Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, could control the bill.
What was sneaked through?
1 – 3: Aircraft “wish lists.” The military services have an elaborate mechanism each year, with the connivance of Members of Congress, to overspend on costly weapons. It starts with the Defense Department trying to weigh priorities in putting together the official Presidential budget. But, the services can make their own “wish lists” of weaponry for which the President would not budget – an invitation for contractors to lobby Congress.
(1) Lawmakers included $1.33 billion for 11 additional F-35s above and beyond the budget. The F-35 has an incredible list of cost overruns and unsolved system problems. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found, in effect, that the software, the manufacturing processes, the parts, were all unready for prime time.
Also, lawmakers included $1.01 billion for (2) seven additional EA-18G Growler electronic aircraft and (3) five more F/A-18 Super Hornets. The prices of these have risen, and the Presidential budget made tradeoffs as to how many to buy. We bought the extra billion dollars anyway.
(4) Enormous non-budgeted “submarine spending fund.” This is a new fund that is meant to keep the super-expensive new nuclear missile submarine outside the normal shipbuilding budget. It’s the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.” Every dollar of the submarine costs, which is a $90 billion – plus program, comes out of the Treasury, just, it will not be weighed against other Navy choices.
(5) Approving the Russian rocket engine monopoly. This was McCain’s bete noir. At present, our military satellite launches all make use of the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which use Russian rocket engines. Congress and the Defense Department initially refused to give those companies relief from a new ban on use of the Russian engine after 2019. But, the omnibus spending bill end-ran McCain and set the stage for the companies to stick with Russian engines.
(6) Protecting wasteful bases. Periodically, the President and Congress go through a round of base-closing to close facilities that are no longer needed. President Obama asked to start such a round, and officials thought it would save $2 billion/year but Congress would have none of it. Members of Congress hate seeing bases closed in their districts or states. Congress took the extraordinary step, not merely to refuse to start a round, but even to bar studying or considering one.
(7) Mississippi’s cutter. The New York Times said it all: “Language inserted into the federal budget over the objection of the Obama administration by Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, directed the Coast Guard to build a $640 million National Security Cutter in Mississippi that the Coast Guard says it does not need.”
(8) Maine’s destroyer. Again, the New York Times said it all: A provision “which Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, helped secure, appropriated an extra $1 billion for a Navy destroyer that is likely to be built at Bath Iron Works in her state. The Defense Department had not requested money for the additional ship in this year’s budget.”
(9) The grossly excessive “Littoral Combat Ship” (LCS) program. The LCS is a Navy ship meant to be able to sail close to shore. It has had several negative reports by the GAO, and one of the newest LCSs broke down at sea in December. Nonetheless, Austal USA just announced an award within a $3.5 billion LCS contract. So the LCS program is still funded, even though the Secretary of Defense is trying to cut the program back.
(10) Last but not least: Guantanamo. A recent estimate was that Guantanamo costs $454 million annually, perhaps $2.7 million per inmate. President Obama asked to close it. Instead, in this bill, Congress put a whole series of barriers in the way.
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