thedrifter
01-22-05, 08:03 AM
01-19-2005
Who Gets the Gold while Troops Get the Shaft?
By Michael S. Woodson
As troops in Iraq and Afghanistan scrounge for armor and buy their own survival gear, the Defense Industrial Complex (DIC) continues creating the sort of hidden opportunity cost that leads to this disturbing reality.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it this way:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
According to a recent General Accountability Office report (“Contract Management: Guidance Needed to Promote Competition for Defense Task Orders,” July 2004), DoD contract officers had waived requirements for competitive bidding in 34 out of 74 randomly selected multiple-award contract and federal supply schedule orders. That was nearly a fifty percent rate of non-competition, if the random sample was representative of widespread practices.
The GAO report found that such practices likely harmed innovation and cost-efficiency, calling for guidelines to help increase competitive bidding. Some new guidelines are in writing, but what is done matters more than words.
Although the GAO report is on target, it does not state the implications of its data as bluntly as President Eisenhower would about the influence of the DIC over taxpayer supplied funds. It does not even use the term Defense-Industrial Complex, as if that would be too unreasonable or inflammatory a term. However, Eisenhower’s use of the term was more reasonable than this Pentagon’s most banal bureaucratese designed to subdue American audiences with evening news sleep dust.
The GAO recommended new rules requiring more senior contract officers to sign off on multiple-award contract waivers, and DoD officials pledged that the new requirements would go into effect by Oct. 1, 2004, according to a later report in the news website GovExec.com (“Defense Urged to Promote More Competition on Task Orders,” Aug. 11, 2004). That date happened to coincide with the start of the 2005 fiscal year and a new National Defense Authorization Act, conveniently protecting past uncompetitive contract deals.
The GAO report did cite some DoD contract officers’ justifications for competitive bidding waivers, including the “Halliburton justification” in Iraq, (e.g. no other available contractor was qualified). However, DoD granted a significant number of waivers merely by requests from “incumbent” contractors.
Like an incumbent politician serves successive terms in the same office, an incumbent contractor services the same contract through successive open bid opportunities, for various reasons. Some may be legitimate, however, there ought to be mandatory public disclosure of the nature and reason for the requested waiver – by GAO for example – before it is granted to make room for statutorily created objections.
As it is now, competitive waiver requests by incumbent contractors may pass muster in the defense budget process because of powerful incumbents in Congress who share their love for pork.
Consider what happened last year when the House and Senate finalized the $416.2 billion defense spending package for fiscal 2005. Here is what a special report by the nonprofit California Institute for Federal Policy Research (CI) had to say: “In the House, the appropriations bill was shepherded by House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis (Redlands), and the authorization bill was led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (Alpine).” Both are California representatives.
The CI report itemized defense funds going to California’s aerospace industry, for example, the MV-22 Osprey programs for the Marine Corps and Air Force; the national missile defense system; 42 F/A-18 fighters; the Joint Strike Fighter development program; 24 more F/A-22s; an infrared space system; and 15 C-17 aircraft for rapid deployment of troops and cargo to tomorrow’s Pentagon-booked travel destinations.
The bunker-busting budget provided increases to the ever-inaccurate missile defense program of $1 billion from 2004, and $60 million more for B-2 bomber upgrades. The Joint Strike Fighter program was up $87 million from 2004. Whose naval and air forces are we deterring with these big-ticket items? Is this partly about bailing out California’s economy for a GOP star governor?
And what about armored vehicles designed especially to protect our ground troops now engaged in combat? At a cost of $625 million, the troops are to get “procurement and fielding” of just one additional Stryker brigade. Compare that with the $846.6 million budgeted for only eight MV-22 Ospreys, which have a crash-test dummy reputation in aviation circles.
Finally, what amount of the $625 million invested in the new Stryker brigade goes to procurement as opposed to fielding, and why?
There was also the overdue 3.5 percent military pay increase in the final bill. How much above the rise in the cost of living, including fuel costs, was that raise?
The beat goes on: President Bush on Oct. 18, 2004, signed the Homeland Security appropriations bill for 2005 to the tune of $32 billion, according to “Government Computer News.” This reflected a $2 billion increase from 2004 on infrastructure protection spending, virtual security applications and other technologies. This is a positive move by the government, if it is wisely spent. The less porky the better.
One hopes that the bulk of homeland security spending will go to detection and countermeasures aimed at portable WMDs, followed by the hiring of several thousand linguists and human intelligence assets who can gather and rapidly translate intelligence from the populations that hate us the most. A sign of DIC porkification is a homeland security budget emphasizing Orwellian technologies and surveillance networks that cannot avert low-tech guerilla means to high yield sabotage and surprise attack as happened on 9/11.
At minimum, the Bush administration and Congress should take two key steps to check the unwarranted influence of the DIC and insure quality spending that gives America the best defense for its dollars:
* Establish enforceable rules to insure competitive bidding in defense contracts and monitoring by disinterested persons while clearly defining what national emergencies would warrant a waiver of competitive bidding, if any;
* The Commander-in-Chief must control and direct the Pentagon war policy away from terminal imperial spending with limited and clearly definable military objectives, not political and economic goals which depend on foreign populations who may then control U.S. troop allocation by perpetually rebelling in a worldwide shell game like they employed between Fallujah and Mosul.
Let’s not let our President fall asleep so soundly to history that he fails to listen even to the likes of Dwight Eisenhower. As for Congress, George Washington’s farewell address should be required reading as of yesterday. May it somehow be blessed.
Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/27645-1.html
http://www.calinst.org/pubs/def05c.htm
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0804/081104a1.htm
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0804/081104a1.htm
Ellie
Who Gets the Gold while Troops Get the Shaft?
By Michael S. Woodson
As troops in Iraq and Afghanistan scrounge for armor and buy their own survival gear, the Defense Industrial Complex (DIC) continues creating the sort of hidden opportunity cost that leads to this disturbing reality.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it this way:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
According to a recent General Accountability Office report (“Contract Management: Guidance Needed to Promote Competition for Defense Task Orders,” July 2004), DoD contract officers had waived requirements for competitive bidding in 34 out of 74 randomly selected multiple-award contract and federal supply schedule orders. That was nearly a fifty percent rate of non-competition, if the random sample was representative of widespread practices.
The GAO report found that such practices likely harmed innovation and cost-efficiency, calling for guidelines to help increase competitive bidding. Some new guidelines are in writing, but what is done matters more than words.
Although the GAO report is on target, it does not state the implications of its data as bluntly as President Eisenhower would about the influence of the DIC over taxpayer supplied funds. It does not even use the term Defense-Industrial Complex, as if that would be too unreasonable or inflammatory a term. However, Eisenhower’s use of the term was more reasonable than this Pentagon’s most banal bureaucratese designed to subdue American audiences with evening news sleep dust.
The GAO recommended new rules requiring more senior contract officers to sign off on multiple-award contract waivers, and DoD officials pledged that the new requirements would go into effect by Oct. 1, 2004, according to a later report in the news website GovExec.com (“Defense Urged to Promote More Competition on Task Orders,” Aug. 11, 2004). That date happened to coincide with the start of the 2005 fiscal year and a new National Defense Authorization Act, conveniently protecting past uncompetitive contract deals.
The GAO report did cite some DoD contract officers’ justifications for competitive bidding waivers, including the “Halliburton justification” in Iraq, (e.g. no other available contractor was qualified). However, DoD granted a significant number of waivers merely by requests from “incumbent” contractors.
Like an incumbent politician serves successive terms in the same office, an incumbent contractor services the same contract through successive open bid opportunities, for various reasons. Some may be legitimate, however, there ought to be mandatory public disclosure of the nature and reason for the requested waiver – by GAO for example – before it is granted to make room for statutorily created objections.
As it is now, competitive waiver requests by incumbent contractors may pass muster in the defense budget process because of powerful incumbents in Congress who share their love for pork.
Consider what happened last year when the House and Senate finalized the $416.2 billion defense spending package for fiscal 2005. Here is what a special report by the nonprofit California Institute for Federal Policy Research (CI) had to say: “In the House, the appropriations bill was shepherded by House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis (Redlands), and the authorization bill was led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (Alpine).” Both are California representatives.
The CI report itemized defense funds going to California’s aerospace industry, for example, the MV-22 Osprey programs for the Marine Corps and Air Force; the national missile defense system; 42 F/A-18 fighters; the Joint Strike Fighter development program; 24 more F/A-22s; an infrared space system; and 15 C-17 aircraft for rapid deployment of troops and cargo to tomorrow’s Pentagon-booked travel destinations.
The bunker-busting budget provided increases to the ever-inaccurate missile defense program of $1 billion from 2004, and $60 million more for B-2 bomber upgrades. The Joint Strike Fighter program was up $87 million from 2004. Whose naval and air forces are we deterring with these big-ticket items? Is this partly about bailing out California’s economy for a GOP star governor?
And what about armored vehicles designed especially to protect our ground troops now engaged in combat? At a cost of $625 million, the troops are to get “procurement and fielding” of just one additional Stryker brigade. Compare that with the $846.6 million budgeted for only eight MV-22 Ospreys, which have a crash-test dummy reputation in aviation circles.
Finally, what amount of the $625 million invested in the new Stryker brigade goes to procurement as opposed to fielding, and why?
There was also the overdue 3.5 percent military pay increase in the final bill. How much above the rise in the cost of living, including fuel costs, was that raise?
The beat goes on: President Bush on Oct. 18, 2004, signed the Homeland Security appropriations bill for 2005 to the tune of $32 billion, according to “Government Computer News.” This reflected a $2 billion increase from 2004 on infrastructure protection spending, virtual security applications and other technologies. This is a positive move by the government, if it is wisely spent. The less porky the better.
One hopes that the bulk of homeland security spending will go to detection and countermeasures aimed at portable WMDs, followed by the hiring of several thousand linguists and human intelligence assets who can gather and rapidly translate intelligence from the populations that hate us the most. A sign of DIC porkification is a homeland security budget emphasizing Orwellian technologies and surveillance networks that cannot avert low-tech guerilla means to high yield sabotage and surprise attack as happened on 9/11.
At minimum, the Bush administration and Congress should take two key steps to check the unwarranted influence of the DIC and insure quality spending that gives America the best defense for its dollars:
* Establish enforceable rules to insure competitive bidding in defense contracts and monitoring by disinterested persons while clearly defining what national emergencies would warrant a waiver of competitive bidding, if any;
* The Commander-in-Chief must control and direct the Pentagon war policy away from terminal imperial spending with limited and clearly definable military objectives, not political and economic goals which depend on foreign populations who may then control U.S. troop allocation by perpetually rebelling in a worldwide shell game like they employed between Fallujah and Mosul.
Let’s not let our President fall asleep so soundly to history that he fails to listen even to the likes of Dwight Eisenhower. As for Congress, George Washington’s farewell address should be required reading as of yesterday. May it somehow be blessed.
Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/27645-1.html
http://www.calinst.org/pubs/def05c.htm
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0804/081104a1.htm
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0804/081104a1.htm
Ellie