By Emelie Rutherford
A congressional proposal to create a new Pentagon director of independent cost assessment is on hold for now, after powerful supporters were not able to attach a provision creating the new post to the recently passed defense authorization bill
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) proposed the new Defense Department oversight role–to ensure non-biased reviews of the accuracy of cost estimates for major defense programs–during a June 3 hearing of his committee.
The person would have “authorities and responsibilities comparable to those of the director of operational test and evaluation, so that we can attempt to ensure that the information on which we base program and budget decisions is objective,” he said in June, after decrying “unrealistic cost and schedule estimates” for acquisition programs (Defense Daily, June 4).
Levin said yesterday he will seek to pass legislation next year to create the new Pentagon position–either through standalone legislation or attached to another bill, “whatever moves quicker,” he told Defense Daily.
He was not able to attach an amendment he wrote, which would have created the new job, to the fiscal year 2009 defense authorization bill that passed the Senate last Saturday and is awaiting President Bush’s signature. That’s because during largely partisan squabbling over which amendments would be considered for the bill, he was not able to garner support for a massive manager’s package of approximately 100 amendments, which contained the one in question.
“If you take a look at the weapon systems costs that we’ve had, and the procurement failures that we’ve had in terms of cost analysis, in terms of prediction of cost…we’re just being swamped,” Levin said. “We cannot possibly deal with these huge cost increases. We’ve got to be a lot tighter, a lot tougher, and get to the problem a lot earlier.”
Speaking before the Senate voted yesterday on a massive Wall Street bailout package, Levin said the current economic environment “will help” secure support for efforts like creating the new independent cost assessment shop in the Pentagon.
“We’re going to have such a debt situation that people are going to insist that where there are these kind of cost overruns and excesses, that they be dealt with,” he said. “So if anything good can come of this mess, one of them will be a lot more pressure on [controlling the] cost [of defense programs].”
Levin acknowledged yesterday there was some pushback from the Pentagon to his proposal for the director of independent cost assessment post.
“They thought they had something like it already,” the senator said, maintaining the new oversight role is needed.
Pentagon acquisition czar John Young, immediately after the June 3 hearing, told reporters that he had to think and learn more about Levin’s proposal. Yet, Young noted: “I personally believe the head of the Cost Analysis Improvement Group is kind of that person.”