The U.S. today has a $10.6 trillion national debt and huge unmet needs in such areas as health care, education, infrastructure and sustainable energy. Unfortunately, in the midst of all of this the Pentagon, with a greatly expanded budget of $540 billion, continues to waste billions every year. Despite repeated warnings about longstanding problems with the military's inventory management, $7.5 billion worth of unneeded parts were stashed in Navy warehouses, according to a new Government Accountability Office report that I requested.
Having too many spare parts just doesn't make sense. The bloated inventories were so big that the parts-on-hand in some cases exceeded the expected demand for the items for decades to come, according to the report.
In addition to the hefty price tag for buying the unnecessary parts, the Navy shelled out another $18 million just to store the excess parts.
And that's not even the worst of it. In fact, the Navy has ordered millions of dollars in spare parts that have not yet been delivered to its warehouses that already are marked for disposal. That is both unbelievable and outrageous.
Without acting on the GAO's cost-saving recommendations, the report added, "the Navy will likely continue to purchase and retain items that it does not need and then spend additional resources to handle and store these items."
It's not just the Navy. The new GAO report is the latest in a long series of audits to spotlight costly waste in the military procurement process at the Pentagon. Last September, the GAO calculated that more than half of the Air Force's secondary inventory, with a total average value of $31.4 billion, was not needed to support service requirements. A report on the Army inventory practices is due out in January.
One result of squandering money on excessive spare parts, the latest report concluded, is that "these funds are not available to meet other military needs."
To my way of thinking, the waste by the military is even more outrageous at a time when investments in rebuilding roads and bridges and schools are desperately needed as part of an economic recovery package to help pull us out of a steep recession.
For years now, the Pentagon has been urged to provide incentives to reduce purchases of unneeded on-order inventory, conduct a comprehensive assessment of unneeded inventory items on hand, and to take measures to address fluctuations in demand that produce these huge inventories.
They say they are working on it. Fine, but we don't need more lip service. It obviously is not good enough just to say "do a better job." We must make it illegal for the military to spend appropriations on spare parts that it cannot justify.
This is not a new problem. In 1940, then Senator Harry Truman headed up a Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. In the course of World War II, more than $15 billion in unnecessary and fraudulent defense spending was identified. We could use that same kind of concerted effort today to root out waste. That's why I cosponsored legislation that was approved by the Senate to establish an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. wartime contracting abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At a time when our country faces an unprecedented economic crisis we need to be vigorous in ending fraud, waste and duplication in all areas of government. For too long, the Pentagon has been exempt from that scrutiny. That neglect must end now.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, is a member of the Senate Budget Committee.
www.sanders.senate.gov/buzz
Bernie Sanders is the independent U.S. Senator from Vermont. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. He is a member of the Senate's Budget, Veterans, Environment, Energy, and H.E.L.P. (Health, Education, (more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Since we won World War II and drew even in Korea, I won't nitpick about $15 billions. In 1944 and in 1945 the public refused to buy War Bonds. They deserved the worthless greenbacks printed to pay war profiteers.
Since then, however, we have staged three false flag events to initiate three preemptive wars all of which we lost. Maybe, God is trying to tell us something.
Under the new anti-slavery laws in the 1840's, the British Navy wrecked the slave trade on the Indian Ocean. Why can't the US Navy subdue the Somalia pirates? Four millions human beings are abducted into slavery every year. Surely, our destroyers are faster than slave ships. Our patrol planes identified Japanese invasion forces for our air force. Abolishing slavery would be our best achievement in 150 years.
by
Jason Paz (68 articles, 88 quicklinks, 112 diaries, 1386 comments [97 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Friday, Dec 19, 2008 at 9:36:29 AM
As an Army man, I ran through more spare parts than you can imagine. The reason, the equipment was no damn good. The real waste is the over-priced and under-performing equipment that the military insists on buying over and over again.
by
Kenneth Barr (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 107 comments) on Friday, Dec 19, 2008 at 11:00:58 PM
As a veteran of Naval aviation, I can assure you many of those parts are necessary. There nothing worse then being out in the middle of an ocean and have to order a part that’ll take weeks to arrive. The branches don’t set the price and what’s worse, corporations are taking over the job many lower paid service members did for 2 to 3 times the pay. Dad was a M/Sgt making E-8 pay and in his day, it was dirt, and now big corporations are horning in and making billions. War is profitable and big business wants its share. Since there is no competition any more, the big monopolies can charge whatever they want. I remember the landing gear switches for the A-7 cost $100 and at the same time I saw them in a surplus catalog for $1.00. There used to be at least 10 major aircraft corporations and when the military needed an aircraft, they at least pretended to have a competition, but now Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop Grumman sell them whatever they damn well please and make them like it. Most designers have no maintenance experience, and I have personally cursed a few aeronautical engineers. We were appalled at the prices the government was being soaked for those parts and could have on many occasions obtained less expensive parts, but were locked into a contract.
If you were to try to use federal troops for building up America, companies would scream unfair competition and whine like wounded babies. Many in the DoD are surplussing parts who haven’t got the slightest what they are putting on the auction block. Something tells me Bernie Sanders was never in the service and is hard pressed to understand the problem from their end.
by
Dave Kisor (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 310 comments [40 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Dec 20, 2008 at 9:54:39 PM
(0+)
Want to post your own comment on this Article?
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Contact Author
View Authors' Articles
(0+)
Must Read (0) 
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (0) 
