WORD COUNT 648                                                                                                                                                            NOVEMBER 19, 2008

THE PENTAGON IS AS BLOATED AS WALL STREET – by Jack Shanahan 

Our government is sinking $700 billion in taxpayer dollars into a system riddled with waste, and often incapable of tracking where the money goes. No, I’m not talking about Wall Street. The teetering enterprise in question is actually the Pentagon.  

The U.S. defense establishment is in dire need of a rescue. But unlike Wall Street, where we threw billions of dollars at the problem, a Pentagon bailout requires taking money away—and fast. 

Late in September, when America’s attention was consumed by the presidential election and the collapse of the financial sector, the House of Representatives passed a defense authorization bill totaling $612 billion. Our overall defense spending, factoring in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been stretching toward the $700 billion mark for some time now, the highest level since the end of World War II. 

Where does all this money go? That’s hard to say. 

The Pentagon Inspector General has unsuccessfully tried to audit our military finances since 1990 and estimates that a review won’t be completed until at least 2016. Reports show that the U.S. Army could not account for about $1 trillion in 2007. The nonpartisan General Accountability Office (GAO) revealed last spring that 95 major Pentagon weapons systems and sweetheart procurement projects were all behind schedule and breaking budgets by $295 billion. 

We also learned from an Associated Press story this month that the Defense Contract Audit Agency, described as the “first line of defense” for the billions of taxpayer dollars that flow from the Pentagon to private contractors, has been rubber stamping their investigations and ignoring abuse.  

One whistleblower at the audit agency summed it up this way: "We have been basically on the trust system for years…It did not work on Wall Street and it is not working for federal contracts." 

With national defense, however, lives as well as livelihoods are on the line, and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars during an economic crisis puts both at risk. The result of years of mismanagement has been smaller forces; fewer planes, tanks and ships; and all at greater expense. Pentagon watchdogs and defense experts have been warning about the runaway train in defense spending for years. But now that the economic crisis threatens the entire federal budget, even voices within the Pentagon are sounding the alarm.  

According to the “Boston Globe” on Nov. 10, a recent report by the Defense Business Board, an official government oversight group, concluded that current Pentagon spending is simply “not sustainable” and urged the incoming president to make sweeping cuts across major programs. 

Where should these cuts come from? 

We can start with the billions of dollars that the Air Force has piled up developing fighter jets like the bloated and unproven F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the F-22 Raptor, whose practical use has remained hidden since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The Army is still pushing Future Combat Systems (FCS), a collection of undeveloped robotic technologies and ground vehicles at a cost of $160 billion, which was hard to justify even before the fiscal crunch really began. 

The Navy continues to invest billions in shipbuilding, including projects like the Virginia-class submarine and the DDG-1000 Destroyer that have been plagued by delays and cost overruns without offering a significant contribution to the defense against modern threats. 

Beyond mere dollars and cents, however, the entire decision-making process, from the Pentagon and Congress to the oversight agencies and weapons-acquisition officials, must be overhauled to usher in sunlight and root out conflicts of interest. Otherwise, incentives will persist to increase defense budgets without limits and without regard for other national priorities. 

As the collapse on Wall Street reminds us, a culture of easy money and no accountability eventually endangers us all. Now that the economic crisis may finally force our leaders to get our fiscal house in order, it’s time we applied that same lesson to the Pentagon. 

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Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (ret.) is the former commander of the U.S. Second Fleet. A photo of Jack Shanahan is available CLICK HERE

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