The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

Star Creeps: Petraeus & the Price of the Top-Heavy Pentagon

Gen. David Petraeus

In addition to extramarital affairs and “flirtatious e-mails,” the General Petraeus sex scandal highlighted another of the Pentagon’s dirty little secrets – generals live like billionaires, and taxpayers are footing the bill.

As the Washington Post reported on Saturday, these perks “befitting a billionaire,” include, “palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.”

Lavish perks bestowed to generals increase with higher ranks, as Raymond Dubois, former DoD director of Administration and Management from 2002 to 2005, told Air Force Times. “A four-star has an airplane. A three-star often doesn’t…Can a three-star get an airplane when he needs it? Not always. Does a four-star get an airplane when he needs it? Always. Many times he’ll already have a G5 sitting on the runway, gassed up. There are the kinds of costs that are fairly significant when you add them all up,” according to Dubois.

Taxpayers are paying for this largesse, and they keep paying long after the generals retire—even if they are receiving other salaries and benefits.

General Petraeus, for example, will reportedly receive a $220,000 annual pension for the rest of his life. Petraeus is reaping the benefits of a 2007 provision that dramatically increased the pensions of top generals and admirals, but not the lower ranking soldiers they command. The Pentagon’s press office told POGO, for the average three-star general or admiral that retires from the military, “the annual difference in retired pay between the old and new criteria is about $39,900,” per year.

Coburn: Cut Wasteful Spending at the "Department of Everything"

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!”

POGO's Top Picks for Defense Budget Bill

Yesterday, the Project On Government Oversight sent a letter to Congress with our picks for the most important provisions that should be included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA, H.R. 4310 and S. 3254). Even though election season is in full swing and Congress has passed very little legislation as of late, the NDAA has become something of a must-pass bill and is one of the few bills that’s highly likely to reach the President’s desk for signature this year. The House passed H.R. 4310 and the Senate Armed Services Committee passed S. 3254 in May. Now Hill staffers are in discussions about how to reconcile the two versions during the lame duck session.

Some of POGO’s recommendations center on reining in wasteful Pentagon spending by cutting unnecessary weapons systems and nuclear programs. (Many of these are drawn from Spending Even Less, Spending Even Smarter in which we and Taxpayers for Common Sense identified over $600 billion in defense budget savings.) Of course, several of the measures we champion would enhance oversight and accountability to taxpayers. These range from strengthening whistleblower protections to increasing contractor accountability to improving information about how the Pentagon spends taxpayer dollars.

POGO is also urging Senate leadership to allow adequate time for debate and amendments to the NDAA on the Senate Floor. In addition, the NDAA should be reconciled by an open, transparent conference committee with all proceedings webcast live for the public. A bill of this magnitude, authorizing over $600 billion taxpayer dollars, with such important consequences for our national security and economy should not be rushed through committee or passed behind closed doors.

POGO’s recommendations are listed below. You can also read the letter we sent to HASC and SASC for the details.

The Sequestration Sideshow: Jobs and Pentagon Contracting in Context

This week another major defense contractor used its employees as political pawns in its campaign to halt planned reductions in Pentagon spending.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday “Northrop to shed nearly 600 jobs.” The article includes all of the industry’s talking points about “budget uncertainties,” “jobs lost,” and “more cuts,” and even uses the erroneously high $600 billion amount for defense sequestration (the correct amount is $492, as ProPublica’s critique of media using the $600 billion figure illustrated). Unfortunately, the article not only overstates the actual amount of Pentagon sequestration by more than $100 billion, it also fails to put Northrop’s job-shedding into context. For those interested in a little more balance in their sequestration news, here are a few facts to mull over before jumping on the contractor “doomsday” bandwagon.

First, Northrop has reduced its workforce every year since 2008, cutting thousands of workers every year during a time in which its Department of Defense contract dollars remained fairly constant. Employment figures from its SEC filings for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 chronicle this downsizing. Northrop wasn’t the only defense contractor to cut jobs either. In the past five years the top five defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon—collectively cut nearly 20,000 jobs while their contracts from the DoD increased by more than $10 billion. In short, if there is any connection between revenue and employment it has, at least recently, been in the opposite direction that Northrop would have us believe.

A House of Pentagon Pork

Today the House of Representatives will send a strong message to America (er, rather, to their campaign contributors): It will still be business as usual at the Pentagon, and insane profits made from taxpayer dollars will still be up for grabs.

This afternoon, the House will vote on two bills that together would increase Pentagon spending beyond what it requested and prohibit the Pentagon from reshaping the military to meet 21^st Century threats, which is necessary to make us safer, stronger, and support the troops.

The National Security and Job Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), is a proposal to eliminate sequestration, the congressional mechanism to automatically reduce government spending by more than $1 trillion. While West’s bill doesn’t say precisely how sequestration should be replaced, it takes Pentagon spending off the table. The bill explicitly prohibits “reductions to direct spending for the defense function.”

Spending Billions on B-61 Nuclear Bomb Upgrades Doesn't Make Sense

By MIA STEINLE

We’ve told this story dozens of times before: as experts and the public urge the government to reign in nuclear weapons spending, the cost of nuclear weapons projects skyrockets by hundreds of millions—or billions—of dollars.

As the Washington Post editorial board wrote this weekend, it’s the same old story with the government’s planned refurbishment of the B-61 gravity bomb. The “life extension program” of this nuclear weapon was estimated to cost $4 billion a couple of years ago. Now the price is a staggering $10 billion, the Post reported.

The Project On Government Oversight sent a letter to the Department of Defense in February questioning why U.S. taxpayers are spending billions of dollars to refurbish the 200 or so B-61 bombs that the United States deploys in Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear deterrent. As the Post noted, the justification for this deterrent is shrinking:

CATO Study: Reshaping the Pentagon Budget Won't Negatively Impact on the Economy

A recent study by Benjamin Zycher from the libertarian think tank the CATO Institute reaffirms what we’ve been saying all along: Cutting Pentagon spending will not cause the economic nightmare or job loss catastrophe the defense industry wants us to fear.

In addition to CATO, other right-leaning analysts, advocates, and politicians have also been vocally challenging the narrative that defense spending must not be decreased. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, recently pledged to fight any efforts to divert tax reform revenues toward an increase in Pentagon spending or avoiding across-the-board budget cuts, known as sequestration. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), a senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has called for a national dialogue on sequestration, recognizing that “the average American out there, by big percentages, wants to cut defense by twice the sequester amount.”

This debate isn’t about which side of the aisle you are on—we can all recognize that national security is rooted in economic security. And in fact, Zycher finds that a reduction in defense outlays could actually result in significant economic gains down the road.

Defense Contractor Time Machine: Less Spending, More Jobs, Analysis Reveals

By BEN FREEMAN, Ph.D

For nearly a year, defense contractors have been arguing that potential cuts in Pentagon spending could have a devastating effect on jobs. If military spending is cut via the sequestration mechanism outlined in last year’s Budget Control Act, more than 1 million jobs could be lost, an industry group has argued. The North Carolina News and Observer reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told a Fayetteville, N.C. audience on July 30 that the impact of sequestration on employment would be so severe that it “would be like every major employer in my home state closing down at one time or cutting their business in half.”

Or would it?

According to the Congressional Budget Office, if the sequestration axe falls, the Department of Defense's base budget would still be larger than it was in 2006 (adjusting for inflation).

And, at the end of 2006, according to an analysis by the Project On Government Oversight, the nation’s five top defense contractors employed more people than they did at the end of 2011.

At the end of 2006, the five companies employed a total of 577,200 people, according to reports they filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That was slightly more than the 520,900 they reported at the end of 2011.

Nuclear Agency Can't Ensure Their Own Budget is Credible

By MIA STEINLE

The agency responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons cannot ensure its own budget is credible, which may result in overspending, according to a federal investigative office.

The National Nuclear Security Administration “does not thoroughly review” the budget estimates it compiles from U.S. nuclear weapon sites before it draws up its annual budget request to Congress, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The eight nuclear weapons sites are managed and operated by private contractors for the government.

Senior agency officials told the GAO that there is an “inherent trust” between the agency and the nuclear sites. Additionally, they said that a lack of “financial and personnel resources” mean a formal review of the budget is unrealistic.

Audit the Pentagon: POGO Applauds New Bipartisan Initiative

By ANGELA CANTERBURY and SUZANNE DERSHOWITZ

Although the Pentagon budget has ballooned by billions in the past decade, it can’t even produce a basic financial statement. But last week, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and a bipartisan band of senators introduced a bill to fix this outrage and increase accountability at the Pentagon.

The “Audit the Pentagon Act” (S. 3487) would create critical new enforcement mechanisms coupled with new incentives for the Pentagon to meet its audit schedule (full audit readiness is targeted for all Department of Defense financial statements by 2017). The Project On Government Oversight applauds this crucial step towards more accountability and oversight.

Explaining why this bill matters, Sen. Coburn said, “By failing to pass an audit, the Pentagon has undermined our national security. This bill ends the culture of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ budgeting within the Pentagon that says, ‘don’t ask us how we’re spending money because we can’t tell you.’”

Road Show with Senators, Brought to You by Pentagon Contractors

 

By ANNA MEIER and SUZANNE DERSHOWITZ

Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte hit the road this week in Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia and North Carolina to preach against looming Pentagon spending cuts. Call it the “Misinformation Road Show” brought to you by defense industry contractors.

The trio of Republican senators are throwing out words like “devastating” and “draconian” to describe the potential across-the-board spending cuts, known as “sequestration.” Graham even warned people in Fayetteville that “Y'all are about to get screwed if this thing happens.”

Ah, nothing like a little fear and loathing to rile up swing state voters. Too bad, their message mostly parrots the talking points of the major defense industry contractors.

House Takes Action on America's Call for Smarter Defense Spending

Good news from the Hill! Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives finally listened to growing bipartisan support for putting a stop to runaway Pentagon spending.

In a 247-167 vote, members passed an amendment that freezes Pentagon spending at current levels, except for military personnel, the Defense Health Program, and the overseas contingency operations. It cuts $1.1 billion from the defense budget authorized by the House Armed Services Committee.

The passage of this amendment comes on the heels of a letter the Project On Government Oversight sent on Wednesday supporting the bill. The letter was signed by groups as ideologically diverse as the Tea Party and CODEPINK.

“The vote represents a critical turning point in Congressional spending trends and a show of unified support for reform not seen in many years,” POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian said. “The American people expect better. The message was delivered loud and clear.”