Senators and a veterans group are pushing the idea of a Pentagon audit in the hopes of better understanding where the Defense Department’s money is going and how to spend it in smarter ways, several speakers said.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reintroduced the “Audit the Pentagon Act” earlier this week, “with some pretty stiff penalties if we don’t achieve the ability to know where our money goes. We know that about $20 billion a year, the military doesn’t have any idea where they spent it out of their budget, nobody knows where it went,” Coburn said Sept. 18 at a Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) event entitled “Reforming the Pentagon.”
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure. It’s impossible,” he said.
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| Rep. Duncan Hunter said the Defense Department should not cut its ship fleet or space capabilities, which are vital to securing national interests. Above, two destroyers refuel in the Mediterranean Sea earlier this month. Photo courtesy U.S. Navy. |
CVA Chief Executive Officer Pete Hegseth said at the event that it is challenging to make any real progress in trimming defense spending because “everyone has special interests, and every special interest is coming to the table usually for the right reason,” so instead the group is rallying behind the idea of a thorough audit.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said at the event that DoD should, in addition to being able to account for its spending, also be able to tie spending to risk. He said the department typically submits budgets based on how much it believes Congress will budget rather than based on actual operational needs, and he wants to have “a good, frank conversation” about how various cuts would equate to specific risks.
Several themes arose when speakers discussed opportunities to save money. Privatizing commissaries and schools on military bases was mentioned several times, with Coburn saying DoD could save $7 billion by letting Costco or Walmart run the exchanges and reduce the cost on-base school’s cost per child from $51,000 to $20,000.
“There are a lot of things we can do before we need to start taking away capability,” he said.
Richard Spencer, a member of the Defense Business Board, agreed with those two items and also suggested health care and retirement plans ought to be looked at. He said to a certain extent, tackling these programs instead of major acquisition programs or operations and maintenance budgets amounted to “nibbling at the edge of the cookie,” but he added, “a billion here, a billion there all starts adding up.”
Hunter mentioned military acquisition as a source of savings, noting that often DoD spends money to create its own capabilities–a cloud network, for example–when commercial industry has already made the investment and has a product the military could buy instead of developing its own.
Hunter also suggested that Army force structure might be a source of savings. He said the people needed for a big Army could be recruited easily enough if needed for operations, but he said assets like ships and satellites were needed in times of war and peace and should be spared from cuts.
“America’s got to be able to project its forces, that means having a big navy. Not just a good navy, but a big navy. Not just the quality of ships, but quantity of ships too.”