Why is the Most Wasteful Government Agency Not Part of the Deficit Discussion?

Published on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 by On the Commons

Republicans ignore incompetence, bloat and corruption at the Pentagon
by David Morris

In all the talk about the federal deficit, why is the single largest culprit left out of the conversation? Why is the one part of government that best epitomizes everything conservatives say they hate about government—- waste, incompetence, and corruption—all but exempt from conservative criticism?

Of course, I’m talking about the Pentagon. Any serious battle plan to reduce the deficit must take on the Pentagon. In 2011 military spending accounted for more than 58 percent of all federal discretionary spending and even more if the interest on the federal debt that is related to military spending were added. In the last ten years we have spent more than $7.6 trillion on military and homeland security according to the National Priorities Project.

In the last decade military spending has soared from $300 billion to $700 billion.

When debt ceilings and deficits seem to be the only two items on Washington’s agenda, it is both revealing and tragic that both parties give a free pass to military spending. Representative Paul Ryan’s much discussed Tea Party budget accepted Obama’s proposal for a pathetic $78 billion reduction in military spending over 5 years, a recommendation that would only modestly slow the rate of growth of military spending.

Indeed, the Republican government battering ram appears to have stopped at the Pentagon door. This was evident early on. As soon as they took over the House of Representatives, Republicans changed the rules so that military spending does not have to be offset by reduced spending somewhere else, unlike any other kind of government spending. It is the only activity of government they believe does not have to be paid for. Which brings to mind a bit of wisdom from one of their heroes, Adam Smith. “Were the expense of war to be defrayed always by revenue raised within the year … wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken.”

The Tea Party revolution has only strengthened the Republican Party’s resolve that the Pentagon’s budget is untouchable. An analysis by the Heritage Foundation of Republican votes on defense spending found that Tea Party freshmen were even more likely than their Republican elders to vote against cutting any part of the military budget.

What makes the hypocrisy even more revealing is that the Pentagon turns out to be the poster child for government waste and incompetence.

In 2009 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found “staggering” cost overruns of almost $300 billion in nearly 70 percent of the Pentagon’s 96 major weapons. What’s more, the programs were running, on average, 21 months behind schedule. And when they were completed, they provided less than they promised.

The Defense Logistics Agency had no use for parts worth more than half of the $13.7 billion in equipment stacked up in DOD warehouses in 2006 to 2008.

And these are only the tips of the military’s misspending iceberg. We really don’t know how much the Pentagon wastes because, believe it or not, there hasn’t been a complete audit of the Pentagon in more than 15 years.

In 1994, the Government Management Reform Act required the Inspector General of each federal agency to audit and publish the financial statements of their agency. The Department of Defense was the only agency that has been unable to comply. In fiscal 1998 the Department of Defense used $1.7 trillion of undocumentable adjustments to balance the books. In 2002 the situation was even worse. CBS News reported that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted, “we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”

Imagine that a school district were to reveal that it didn’t know where it spent its money. Now imagine the Republican response. Perhaps, “Off with their desktops!”

How did Congress’ respond to DOD’s delinquency? It gave it absolution and allowed it to opt out of its legal requirement. But as a sop to outraged public opinion Congress required DOD to set a date when it would have its book sufficiently in order to be audited. Which the Pentagon dutiful did, and missed every one of the target dates. The latest is 2017 and DOD has already announced it will be unable to meet that deadline.

Adding insult to injury, last September, the GAO found that the new computer systems intended to improve the Pentagon’s financial oversight are themselves nearly 100 percent or $7 billion over budget and as much as 12 years behind schedule!

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Police join protests in Tunisia

Thousands of demonstrators, including police officers, lawyers and students, have taken to the streets of Tunisia's capital, Tunis, in another day of unrest in the North African country.

At least 2,000 police officers participated in Saturday's demonstrations, according to the Associated Press news agency. They were joined by members of the national guard and fire departments.

Crowds gathered in front of the office of Mohamed Ghannouchi, the interim prime minister, and on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the main street of Tunis.

The rally was the latest in a month of turmoil that toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's longstanding ruler, sending him into exile in Saudi Arabia on January 14.

While many demonstrators are continuing to demand the dissolution of the interim government, the police officers who have joined the protests are seeking better working conditions and an improvement in what they call unfair media portrayal.

Al Jazeera's Nazanine Moshiri, reporting from Tunis, said that the police officers marched with protesters, wearing red armbands in solidarity with the marching crowds.

"They said they want to be with people now, they want to be part of the revolution," she said.

"They no longer want to be persecuted - they say, 'Please don't blame us for the deaths of the protesters'."

Indeed, the protesters have changed tactics.

At the prime minister's office, Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reported, protesters broke through barricades but no violence occurred.

He reported that the anti-riot squad pleaded with the crowd, saying: 'Do whatever you want to do but please don't storm the office of the prime minister. That is a red line."

But protesters were already starting to break the barricades by late afternoon.

Masoud Romdhani, a trade union activist who was at the demonstration, told Al Jazeera that the protests must continue in order to oust the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), the former ruling party, entirely.

Many Tunisians are angry over the inclusion of several prominent members of Ben Ali's cabinet in the new interim government.

Romdhani said labour activists feel that "nothing is done" until the RCD is removed from the cabinet entirely.

Countering such criticism, Sami Zaoui, the Tunisian secretary for communication technologies, told Al Jazeera that "civil society" and opposition parties account for more than two-thirds of the transitional government.

He also rejected the view that Ghannouchi was "in a difficult situation" and played down the ongoing protests as "very local demonstrations".

"We cannot say that the entire country is currently demonstrating," Zaoui said.

Dissolution demanded

A day earlier, hundreds of protesters took to the streets seeking the dissolution of the interim administration.

In an effort to dampen the anger, interim prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, who is a former ally of Ben Ali, pledged to quit politics after elections that he says will be held as soon as possible.

In an interview on Tunisian television on Friday, Ghannouchi said he would leave power after a transition phase that leads to legislative and presidential elections "in the shortest possible timeframe".

Despite resigning his RCD membership, he has been struggling to restore calm under a new multiparty government that the opposition complains retains too many members of the party.

"My role is to bring my country out of this temporary phase and even if I am nominated I will refuse it and leave politics," Ghannouchi said.

He did not say why he was leaving politics or specify when the elections would be held. He said the elections must be a success "to show the world that our country has a civilisation".

Ghannouchi also said that all of the assets held abroad by Ben Ali's regime had been frozen and would be returned to Tunisia after an investigation.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Tunis, said that Ghannouchi also announced that the state would provide compensation to those who died during the uprising, as well as their families.

The army and the justice department have been ordered to preserve any documents and evidence that can be gathered so the old government can be implicated throughout the investigation, our correspondent said.

The transitional government has also said that it would lift a ban on political groups, including the Ennahda (Renaissance) party.

The leader of the formerly banned party, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that Ennahda is democratic and should not be feared, and he rejected any comparison between him and Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"We are a moderate Islamic movement, a democratic movement based on democratic ideals in ... Islamic culture. Some people pull Khomeini's robe over me, while I am no Khomeini nor a Shia," he said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/01/2011122133816146515.html

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Sangin troop withdrawal: Four years in hell, and Taliban remain undefeated Soldiers applaud decision to pull out of 'Sangingrad', where IEDs and sni

The first troops arrived in Sangin in June 2006, filling sandbags as they fought off the Taliban – an enemy that, four years and at least 100 British deaths later, refuses to go away.

As the casualties have mounted over the years, soldiers stationed in Sangin protected themselves with higher walls and an ever darker sense of humour.

"Welcome to Sangingrad" reads the graffiti at the base entrance, in a bitter allusion to a battle that marked a turning point in world war two. Whether that comparison will prove to be prophetic, given the announced withdrawal, remains to be seen.

One senior British non-commissioned officer who was due to deploy to the district in September today described Sangin as a "hellhole".

"It's very hard to dominate without a massive amount of manpower. All the locals there are pro-Taliban. It's an IED [improvised explosive device] hell and it's hard to keep eyes on everywhere."

He was not surprised to learn of the pullout. "Sangin has been a strategic failure. We are not having the desired effect there."

There have been moments of hope. In 2007, American and Afghan infantrymen helped clear the Taliban from Sangin. "This is an incredibly exciting time for the local people. Now they will see the benefits of reconstruction," one young British officer said at the time.

But his optimism was short-lived. Faced with superior soldiers and firepower, the Taliban skillfully employed every means at their disposal. Initially attacking with small arms and mortars, they later switched to the IED – bombs scattered across the fields and rough dirt roads that have claimed the greatest number of British lives.

Last month the deputy commander of British and US forces in Helmand, Brigadier George Norton, said the Sangin militants had switched again, now attacking with long-distance, small-arms fire – similar to sniper fire, although not as effective.

Sangin has a long history of being troublesome to foreigners. It was the scene of the first major military engagement of the second Anglo-Afghan war of 1878, when the British fought a cavalry battle against 1,500 fighters.

The latest generation of British visitors tried to remain upbeat, always claiming that the Taliban were being pushed out, and that normal life in the town was on the verge of resuming.

But as David Gill, a photographer who visited the town frequently in the past 15 months put it, Sangin was "like a ghost town in Death Valley where you drive through and all you see is a sign flapping in the wind".

In some of the more benign areas of Helmand, children may offer the occasional wave to passing soldiers, Gill said, but in Sangin "all you can feel is the intense hatred of a people who hate everything you stand for".

Another senior NCO, who has served there, said soldiers had seen the areas become more stable, with a local market starting to be established. "But it's a very, very strong Taliban area, and a lot of drugs are dealt through that town.

"It's at the bottom of the mountain, and it's on the main river and the main drug route, and is the major area for growing poppies. There's so much resistance because the people there don't want that to change."

The British mission has also been badly undermined by the failures of the Afghan government. Local leaders in Sangin have been weak, corrupt or linked to the drugs trade. Officers wrestle with fiendishly complicated local tribal politics.

As the death toll mounted, the political storm blew harder in Britain. The first row was over the availability of scarce helicopters to move troops and supplies into the stricken town.

Then Operation Panther's Claw, which began in June 2009, was billed as the big British push to clear the area from Sangin to Gereshk to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, of militants in time for Afghan elections later that year. In fact the map of the area has changed little in the intervening 12 months.

Last April, in the runup to the election, David Cameron offered to stop criticising Gordon Brown's government over Afghanistan if it pulled out of areas such as Sangin where the army was overstretched; he was rebuffed and told that "these are judgments for generals".

There are already more than 20,000 American troops in Helmand, twice the number of British soldiers deployed there, and they are also paying a heavy price. Last month four American troops died when their Black Hawk helicopter, on a mission to rescue wounded British soldiers, was shot down outside Sangin.

The second British officer today said the decision to pull out was "a good thing" from a soldier's point of view. "And from the bigger picture, as long as … somebody else is coming in, that's good. It's far too early to just pull out because it's not stable, but if the Americans are going to go in there then let them take the worry.

"We have paid an incredibly high price in Sangin. If you lose one soldier in one place, that's already too high a price to pay, but an awful lot of blood has been shed. So in that sense, I am pleased we will be leaving.

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25 Questions To Ask Anyone Who Is Delusional Enough To Believe That This Economic Recovery Is Real

If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case? Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that. What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.

And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.

Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn't mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.

Any "recovery" that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.

But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.

So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real....

#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?

#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?

#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?

#4) How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?

#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?

#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that "terrible cuts" are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?

#7) But it just isn't California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?

#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?

#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?

#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?

#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?

#13) The FDIC's list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?

#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April. That is the good news. The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming. So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?

#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money. So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two "pillars" of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?

#17) 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin. With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?

#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent. So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America's biggest cities?

#19) Gallup's measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year. Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?

#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession. So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?

#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. So is Barack Obama's mantra that "what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street" actually true?

#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming. Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?

#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier. Does that look like a good trend to you?

#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% - the most in 16 years. Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?

#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005. So shouldn't we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words "economic recovery"?

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