Is this the jobs program?

[bpwallace49]

..Pentagon under fire over war contracts

By Dan De Luce | AFP – 14 hrs ago....tweet34Share2EmailPrint......Related Content.

 

....The Pentagon has wasted more than $30 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan due to shoddy management and a lack of competition, an independent inquiry said.

 

In its final report to Congress due to be released Wednesday, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting warns that waste and fraud have undermined American diplomacy, fomented corruption in host countries and tarnished the US image abroad.

 

"Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted through poor planning, vague and shifting requirements, inadequate competition, substandard contract management and oversight, lax accountability, weak inter-agency coordination, and subpar performance or outright misconduct by some contractors and federal employees," the co-chairs of the panel, Christopher Shays and Michael Thibault, wrote in the Washington Post.

 

"Both government and contractors need to do better," said the commentary published Monday.

 

The report comes amid mounting pressure in Washington to scale back defense spending and waning public support for the Afghan mission after nearly a decade of war.

 

The US military increasingly has turned to private companies since the September 11, 2001 attacks, with the contractor workforce at times surpassing 260,000 people -- a roughly one-to-one ratio with troops deployed.

 

But the commission found that the United States went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003 without sufficiently preparing to handle the "enormous scale and numbers of contracts."

 

As a result, "America is over-relying on contractors," they said.

 

The commission chiefs also warned that another $30 billion or more could be wasted if the Iraqi or Afghan "governments are unable or unwilling to sustain US-funded projects after our involvement ends."

 

The Pentagon said previous inquiries had pointed out problems with contracting and the department had enacted a number of reforms as a result.

 

"We are well aware of some of the deficiencies over the years in how we've worked contracts," spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters.

 

"We have worked hard over those years to try to correct those deficiencies when we've come across them," said Lapan.

 

The department will review the report to look for any additional measures to prevent waste, he added.

 

Among the examples cited by the commission was a $40 million prison built in Iraq that the Baghdad government "did not want and that was never finished," Shays and Thibault wrote.

 

In Afghanistan, the United States spent $300 million on a power plant in Kabul that the Afghan government cannot afford to sustain and lacks the technical experts to run, the panel found.

 

Another report out Monday found the Pentagon has almost tripled funding for no-bid contracts since the attacks of September 11, 2001, from $50 billion in 2001 to $140 billion in 2010.

 

The lack of competition in contracting has resulted in waste, lower quality services and fraud, according to the investigative report by the non-profit Center for Public Integrity.

 

In one case, a Tucson-based company, Applied Energetics, won over $50 million in funding for a futuristic "lightning weapon" that is supposed to detonate roadside bombs, even though it had failed some tests.

 

In August, the Marine Corps canceled the latest $3 million proposed contract after a commander in Afghanistan decided the weapon would not provide what his unit needed.

 

The Defense Department often justifies no-bid contracts by saying there is only one legitimate supplier of certain goods, that there is "an unusual and compelling urgency" or that holding a competition would undermine national security, the report said.

 

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to rein in contracting and after his election, he issued a memorandum calling for more competition. But the report found that Pentagon no-bid contracts have continued to increase.

 

The Pentagon said no-bid contracts were sometimes necessary to rush sophisticated equipment to troops in combat.

 

"There have been many instances because of wartime needs where a long, lengthy competitive bid contract process does not serve the needs of the warfighters," Lapan said.

 

Serious question here . . . if the Tea Party is truly obsessed with saving money, why is Ron Paul the only one with the balls to constantly call for ending these wars?

 

And that is just the amount ruled as "waste", not the total cost of these conflicts.

[SEC=UGA]

I'm betting they wasted MUCH more money than what this independent audit found...

[delusions of grandeur]

Serious question here . . . if the Tea Party is truly obsessed with saving money, why is Ron Paul the only one with the balls to constantly call for ending these wars?

 

And that is just the amount ruled as "waste", not the total cost of these conflicts.

Don't forget about the 9 billion thrown out there with "no oversight" that's "unaccounted for", the money going to mercenaries and "security" forces like Blackwater, and the fact that we have a president who promised to get us out of these wars now supporting rebels in a country that produces oil we don't even currently consume, that continues to drive speculation and keep gas prices high... And the sad thing is I'm only talking about a very small percentage of the total cost, excluding needless loss of life as well... So since we all now that these wars have really been all about resources, if that's the case, then why do we continue to pay insane costs on top of funding unprovoked wars? These conflicts only benefit those in power, no one else.

 

No one gets a free pass on this either... When republicans are in power, we have "war", when dems are in power, we have covert "operations"... And I haven't listened to "tea-partiers" in years since that ideal was hijacked and twisted by republicans seeking to maintain control in the face of a growing libertarian faction of the party.... I'm starting to believe that there isn't another serious politician out there besides Paul who can even half-truthfully say he won't start or continue wars on his watch.

Edited August 30, 2011 by delusions of granduer

[Deathpig]

The graft in the Defense Department is HUGE. I've been whining about it forever. I have no problem with us spending what we do on Defense, but I can't stand the fact that it seems like we receive only about 20% of the value of that money in actual results. I'd prefer we get MUCH closer to 100% value, and if that meant that the overall spending could be cut, then great.

 

The real reason all that crap happens is Defense graft is one of the biggest honey-pots for politicians, and because of that it's unlikely it ever gets cleaned up.

 

Between farming out contracts to states/localities as 'rewards' for votes, to companies associated with campaign contributors as 'rewards' for financing, and to ex-politicians and other allies as 'rewards' for service (or, often, taking the bullet in a scandal), billions are wasted on things that aren't even remotely tied to 'Defense'.

[SEC=UGA]

The graft in the Defense Department is HUGE. I've been whining about it forever. I have no problem with us spending what we do on Defense, but I can't stand the fact that it seems like we receive only about 20% of the value of that money in actual results. I'd prefer we get MUCH closer to 100% value, and if that meant that the overall spending could be cut, then great.

 

The real reason all that crap happens is Defense graft is one of the biggest honey-pots for politicians, and because of that it's unlikely it ever gets cleaned up.

 

Between farming out contracts to states/localities as 'rewards' for votes, to companies associated with campaign contributors as 'rewards' for financing, and to ex-politicians and other allies as 'rewards' for service (or, often, taking the bullet in a scandal), billions are wasted on things that aren't even remotely tied to 'Defense'.

 

We just completed a re-roof on a building at a Military base. What should have been a 5 day project turned into two weeks. The corp had to inspect the progress 3 times a day, they had to write a specialized work scope/policy and procedures for the electrician (who came to unhook the electricity to some blowers and AC units on top of the building.) this delayed us two days, the first day our crew had to go through a safety meeting, etc...

 

We, of course, built money into our contract for this and having to deal with this crap adds about, oh 30% to 40% to the price.

 

Some money was also added at the end as Hurricane Irene was blowing into the area, we left our crew up there a couple extra days just in case. I'm going to have to bill for two additional days as my crew can not get inside the building until tomorrow as the building was "turned over" to the "end user" who has the keys and must get a 48 hour requisition notice (meaning you have to request hem to open the thing up and if they feel like it they will come out after 48 hours) to come out and open the building so that we can check to see if it leaked during the hurricane.

 

Crazy stuff....

[whoopazz]

We just completed a re-roof on a building at a Military base. What should have been a 5 day project turned into two weeks. The corp had to inspect the progress 3 times a day, they had to write a specialized work scope/policy and procedures for the electrician (who came to unhook the electricity to some blowers and AC units on top of the building.) this delayed us two days, the first day our crew had to go through a safety meeting, etc...

 

We, of course, built money into our contract for this and having to deal with this crap adds about, oh 30% to 40% to the price.

 

Some money was also added at the end as Hurricane Irene was blowing into the area, we left our crew up there a couple extra days just in case. I'm going to have to bill for two additional days as my crew can not get inside the building until tomorrow as the building was "turned over" to the "end user" who has the keys and must get a 48 hour requisition notice (meaning you have to request hem to open the thing up and if they feel like it they will come out after 48 hours) to come out and open the building so that we can check to see if it leaked during the hurricane.

 

Crazy stuff....

 

We are doing a demo at a base by installing solar panels for air conditioning. We planned to use an identical building (mess hall) as a baseline to show if the solar system saves money. But the condition of the baseline hvac system is so bad that we can't use the data. Unbelievable inefficiencies at this place (filters bad or missing, motors blown out, dampers broken), I mean unbelievable how much energy is being wasted. We pressed the maintenance supervisor for answers and the stock response is... . They couldn't care less about the cost. Small potatoes but when you extrapolate that kind of waste across the whole DoD It's maddening.

[westvirginia]

The graft in the Defense Department is HUGE. I've been whining about it forever. I have no problem with us spending what we do on Defense, but I can't stand the fact that it seems like we receive only about 20% of the value of that money in actual results. I'd prefer we get MUCH closer to 100% value, and if that meant that the overall spending could be cut, then great.

 

The real reason all that crap happens is Defense graft is one of the biggest honey-pots for politicians, and because of that it's unlikely it ever gets cleaned up.

 

Between farming out contracts to states/localities as 'rewards' for votes, to companies associated with campaign contributors as 'rewards' for financing, and to ex-politicians and other allies as 'rewards' for service (or, often, taking the bullet in a scandal), billions are wasted on things that aren't even remotely tied to 'Defense'.

 

This. It's worth billions to this economy to have a "don't fu(k with us" military, but we aren't getting near what we're paying for.

[Bronco Billy]

Sounds like a pretty serious management problem.

[Ursa Majoris]

The graft in the Defense Department is HUGE. I've been whining about it forever. I have no problem with us spending what we do on Defense, but I can't stand the fact that it seems like we receive only about 20% of the value of that money in actual results. I'd prefer we get MUCH closer to 100% value, and if that meant that the overall spending could be cut, then great.

 

The real reason all that crap happens is Defense graft is one of the biggest honey-pots for politicians, and because of that it's unlikely it ever gets cleaned up.

 

Between farming out contracts to states/localities as 'rewards' for votes, to companies associated with campaign contributors as 'rewards' for financing, and to ex-politicians and other allies as 'rewards' for service (or, often, taking the bullet in a scandal), billions are wasted on things that aren't even remotely tied to 'Defense'.

 

 

This. It's worth billions to this economy to have a "don't fu(k with us" military, but we aren't getting near what we're paying for.

Oh, praise God, some people are actually starting to look at some of the big rocks instead of the sand.

[westvirginia]

Oh, praise God, some people are actually starting to look at some of the big rocks instead of the sand.

 

I've always been with you on culling the bureaucracy from the Pentagon as long as we aren't cutting more than the featherbedding. We need to keep the strongest military in the world, but like everything else fedgov it's stupidly costly.