By BEN FREEMAN
As fears of the impending “fiscal cliff” continue to mount, at least one Member of Congress is laying out proposals for cutting wasteful spending at the Pentagon, or, as Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) refers to it, the “Department of Everything.”
A new report released today by Coburn finds that the DoD could save $67.9 billion over ten years by making specific cuts to what he describes as “non-defense” defense spending.
The report targets “five areas of the Pentagon budget that have little to do with national security where taxpayer dollars could be saved and deficits reduced without impacting our national security.”
Not everyone may agree with everything Coburn recommends should be cut, but there are certainly some doozies in the report, including:
- An app that lets you know when it’s time for a coffee break.
- Research which found that “Fish could show the nation how to overcome political polarization and promote democracy.”
- $1.5 million for a Pentagon project “to develop its own brand of jerky treats that are the bomb!”
Another Coburn proposal would right-size the bloated top ranks at the Pentagon. Just last fall, a Project On Government Oversight analysis revealed that today’s military is the most top-heavy in U.S. history. As Coburn said at the press briefing held to announce the release of his report, “We almost have an Admiral for every ship in the Navy.” Thus, there’s ample room for cuts here, and Coburn’s proposal to reduce the number of top brass by 20%—which would still leave the military with roughly the same general-to-troop ratio it had during the Cold War—would save an estimated $800 million over ten years.
The report also looks to cut spending on wasteful programs that don’t appear to help soldiers, but instead only seem to benefit the friends and family of top Pentagon officials. The epitome of this for Coburn is a bomb detector developed by RedXDefense, cronyism that POGO asked the DoD to investigate. According to Coburn’s report, “The bomb detector developed by the family business of the DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] director was less effective than ‘a coin flip’ in spotting homemade explosives.”
Coburn’s report adds to a mounting list of proposals, from across the political spectrum, to save taxpayer money by cutting fat from the Pentagon budget. Proposals from groups on the right, such as the Cato Institute, the left, such as the Center for American Progress, and non-partisan groups, such as POGO and Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project on Defense Alternatives, all agree that taxpayers can save hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting wasteful spending from the Pentagon budget without compromising national security.
As Coburn pointed out at the press briefing, “There have not yet been real cuts to the Pentagon,” and “we’re getting a whole lot less, and spending a whole lot more.” We at POGO commend Dr. Coburn for fighting waste of taxpayer money. We hope that more in Congress and the executive branch will follow his example, and find fat to cut—realizing that reshaping our military to meet 21st Century threats will also help us to create a thriving 21st Century economy.
Ben Freeman is an investigator with the Project On Government Oversight.
The government wasted millions of dollars discriminating against me. I had a severe brain stem injury in 1975 between seventh and eighth grade. I graduated from the gifted grade school afterwards. I was discriminated against terribly in high school. I did well in college and graduated with a BA in journalism, French and English and a liberal arts degree. After I returned home, people egged me on and discriminated against me. I was put in the state mental health facility in this area three times and a private hospital mental health ward three times. I saw counselors for fifteen years and was given medication to which I was allergic. I had a latent anaphylactic reaction and almost died. Then, the head psychiatrist in this area changed my diagnosis and said I had an organic brain dysfunction caused by my severe head injury. Currently, I live in Creve Coeur, IL. The village would not keep the street on which I live cleaned off from the snow. I broke my ankle about three years ago and had to have my knee from my other leg replaced about a year ago. The people who live next door to me include the daughter of the mayor. She and her children steal the packages that are left at my doorstep. Some of those packages I have found in her trash. Some of those packages include medical equipment for my C-pap which the government pays for in the form of Medicare.
Posted by: Catherine E. Critz | Nov 22, 2012 at 08:45 PM