The Pentagon is wasteful, but few know the extent of waste
Is the Pentagon one of the reasons poverty persists in America? This is a question I would often contemplate while I was a budget analyst on Capitol Hill.
My job was to keep track of federal spending in the areas of defense and foreign affairs for the House Budget Committee. Often, I’d have to travel to speak to groups to help explain the federal budget process. I would always begin my talks by asking someone in the audience to guess what percentage of the budget the U.S. spends on international affairs annually. The estimates were always way above the actual figure, which is around 1%. Then I’d ask someone to guess how much we spend to help the poor in America. Again, the estimates were higher than the approximate 8% we spend.
Then, I’d ask someone to estimate what the country spends on defense. Now, this is when it would get interesting. Every once in a while someone would guess within a few hundred billion dollars of the actual figure, which is around $800 billion, or roughly 13% of total spending. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, most of my audiences would express concerns about U.S. defense spending, but few would actually get angry about it, that is, until I’d tell them about the waste.
The pentagon budget is like a black hole, a trillion-dollar slush fund, mad-money for Defense officials to use on shopping sprees. And, the amount of waste is astounding.
During the Iraq/Afghan wars, truckloads of cash would just go missing. Iraq and Afghanistan lacked a reliable banking system, so the U.S. would stuff C-130s with bundles of shrink-wrapped $100 dollar bills once or twice a month, and fly them into both countries to be spent on ministry operations and federal contractors. Much of that money simply vanished. The Iraq Reconstruction Special Inspector General found that $8.8 billion was dispersed in Iraq, “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for.” In Afghanistan alone, it is estimated that the U.S. lost $600 billion due to waste, corruption and incompetence. Such waste is not just a wartime problem either.
Today, it is estimated the U.S. Department of Defense wastes tens of billions of dollars annually on what the Scientific American called a “parade of overpriced, botched and bungled projects.” In the 2000s alone, the Pentagon has had to kill programs worth billions, such as the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, a fleet of networked high-tech vehicles, because the systems did not work, and the Comanche helicopter that, after 22 years of development and billions invested, never ended up being built.
The full extent of Pentagon waste can only be guessed at because, believe it or not, the Pentagon has never passed an independent audit. Hundreds of billions of dollars in their budget, and no one can say with total confidence how it’s being spent. To put this into perspective, just the money estimated to have been wasted on the FCS program alone could have funded the total budget of the Environmental Protection Agency for two years.
According to Senators Bernie Sand mont and Charles Grassley of Iowa, “Since the early 1990s, Federal law has required audits for all agencies. Last year, the DOD failed its fifth audit and was unable to account for over half of its assets, which are in excess of $3.1 trillion, or roughly 78 percent of the entire federal government.”
Think about all the federal programs struggling to find money while billions at the Pentagon go wasted or unaccounted for—money that could be used to help Americans fight the effects of Climate Change, or to support low and mid-income parents struggling to afford daycare, or to feed the hungry.
Every year, the Federal government threatens to come to a halt because of congressional bickering over the budget. While some leaders are willing to force a shutdown unless drastic cuts are made to important economic security programs, what you won’t hear is a lot of talk about cutting defense.
Senators Sanders and Grassley think the DOD has never passed an audit because Pentagon leaders don’t think it’s a priority. The senators and Representative Barbara Lee of California hope to change the DOD’s thinking with their recently introduced Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023, which requires the DOD to pass an independent audit in FY24 or risk having 1% of its budget cut and returned to the Treasury.
There are many reasons why auditing an agency as large and complex as the Pentagon is difficult. But anyone concerned about poverty in America can think of at least one good reason why an audit is necessary.
As a former congressional staffer, I know passing an audit will never be a priority for the generals at the Pentagon until it’s a priority for Congress, and it will never be a priority for Congress until it’s a priority for voters. So, every one of us who cares about how our tax dollars are spent, and thinks auditing the Pentagon is a good idea, needs to make our voices heard.