The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog

A Peek at Pentagon Pork: A Taxpayers' Guide

WINSLOW WHEELER

This article originally appeared in TIME's Battleland.

The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee (sometimes called the HAC-D) have reported their separate defense bills to the House of Representatives (both bills purport to address both spending and policy). The House has already debated and passed the HASC's "National Defense Authorization Act" (NDAA); it will soon debate the defense appropriations bill. Let's check out what they’ve drafted and try to figure out which panel is the House’s reigning Pentagon pork king.

The press has covered both bills with multiple daily articles; the House debate, while truncated, got into all sorts of nuts and bolts, including amendments on labor practices in DOD contracting, military depot policy, and protection of sea otters in navy exercise areas, among many other things. In all, there were 141 amendments allowed for debate. That level of legislative and journalistic activity would suggest that the bill and its accompanying “committee report” were thoroughly scrubbed to make sure there were no slimy invertebrates hiding under rocks in the depths of the bill or its report.

Think no such thing.

The sea otters and other minutia addressed in amendments, for example, reflect the energy and thoroughness of lobbyists, not of congressional staff or others. Otherwise, some particularly odious elements of the HASC bill would hopefully have been challenged by one of the very few existing guardians of ethics and governance in the House. Had they or their staffs combed thoroughly through the bill and report they would have uncovered and, I hope, exposed that everlasting object of interest by Members of Congress: pork.

Surely, that’s impossible. Even if reluctantly, Congress reformed itself on pork. Right? Indeed, it says so right here on page 530:

Un-Do Influence: Air Force's Revolving Door Helped Booz Allen Hamilton Get Unfair Edge

Facepalm Ratings Guide = Stupefying example of everything that's wrong with the system. = Outrageous; shameless, even. = Worthy of rebuke. = Even if there's no conflict of interest, appearances matter.

---------------------------- Click here to join POGO's Un-Do Influence campaign.

By JOE NEWMAN

Global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is paying the price for playing fast and loose with federal contracting rules. But it's how Booz Allen's San Antonio operations may have obtained information from a competitor that takes our facepalm ratings to a new low.

According to a Feb. 6 Air Force memo, in April 2011, Booz Allen hired retired Air Force Lt. Col. Joselito Meneses, who had served as deputy chief in the Information Technology division of the Medical Support Agency under the Office of the Air Force Surgeon General.

On his first day of work for Booz Allen, Meneses arrived with a hard-drive containing non-public information he had obtained during his Air Force tenure.

Some of the data on the drive was proprietary information from one of Booz Allen's competitors, which the San Antonio office used to help shape its own bid to the Air Force, according to the memo.

As a result, the Booz Allen's San Antonio unit has been suspended and recommended for debarment. The company fired Meneses after a whistleblower brought the activity to the attention of company officials.

Meneses shows how the revolving door can corrupt the federal contracting system by allowing companies to get unfair, competitive advantages when they hire former government employees. The case also shows how former federal officials are motiviated to use their insider knowledge to help their new employers. Meneses knew better. He gets our maxium four-facepalm rating.

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Rep. Grimm Faces Accusations of Improper Fundraising

We've raised questions about Rep. Michael Grimm's efforts to gut protections for financial sector whistleblowers, and how it appears the only people who would benefit from such legislation are Grimm's backers on Wall Street.

Now, Grimm (R-NY) is facing much more serious allegations of influence peddling and improper fundraising. According to a New York Times story, Grimm enlisted the help of Ofer Biton, an Israeli citizen, to help raise more than $500,000 from the followers of a New York rabbi.

Guest Post: Where to Find the Earmarks in the House Defense Appropriations Bill

By WINSLOW WHEELER

The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) has reported the bill and text for the FY 2012 Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 2219), which handles most, but not all, of the appropriations for the Pentagon and Department of Defense (DoD) expenses in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

There are some elements to the bill that the HAC forgot to emphasize in its press releases and that the press has paid little to no attention to.

For example, I found the following to be interesting: There are a pile of earmarks in the bill. Some are sprinkled through the Research, Development, and Testing section. They start in the tables for Army R&D on p. 211. See the very first one: +$20 million for "University and Industry Research Centers," which is explained in the detailed table on p. 218 as for "Historically Black Colleges and Universities." It is explained more fully on p. 205. The explanation, however, does not obviate the fact that the add-on is an earmark to anyone who understands what earmarks are and why they are done.

Continue through with the tables for the other services, etc., and you will find many more—but fewer explanations. There are a pile of earmarks in the Defense Health Program (DHP) accounts—see the $523.5 million added to DHP (p. 269):

Defense Earmark Spending Not Going Down By Much

By MANDY SMITHBERGER

Congressional pledges to save money by cutting earmarks may not be resulting in the promised cost savings after all, according to Congressional researchers.

A June 15th report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) compared the House's recently passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (FY 2012) to FY 2010 and found that while there were fewer "member-sponsored funding initiatives" (known to most people as "earmarks"), they were going to cost about the same altogether and that each earmark was more expensive, on average:

• The FY2010 bill included 372 earmarks each with a value of less than $100 million, providing a total of $1.37 billion (for an average value per earmark of $3.7 million); and
• The FY2012 bill included 98 committee additions with a value of less than $100 million, providing a total of $1.30 billion (for an average value per addition of $13.3 million).

Mandy Smithberger is a POGO investigator.

Image by Flickr user adamendoza, used under Creative Commons License.

Defense Contractors: PACing Political Spending?

By MANDY SMITHBERGER

Are defense contractors' political contributions bearing fruit in the National Defense Authorization Act?

We can't help but wonder now that the Associated Press is reporting that GOP freshmen are taking care of their districts in the new defense bill and bringing in millions of dollars for programs the Pentagon doesn't want in some of their districts.