WASHINGTON — The Senate acted today to clamp down on Pentagon purchasing practices that have led to billions in cost overruns and delays in getting weapons to people at war.
The 93-0 Senate vote on the acquisitions overhaul legislation came as the House Armed Services Committee moved to approve similar legislation. President Barack Obama has pushed for improvements in weapons procurement and urged Congress to get a bill to his desk before Memorial Day.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has also made procurement overhaul a priority, and on Wednesday Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told Congress that the Pentagon plans to add 20,000 personnel over five years to ride herd on contracts, cost estimates and oversight.
The Senate bill strengthens oversight and transparency and creates a new director of independent cost assessment whose job would be ensuring that the budget assumptions of acquisition programs are sound. The director would report directly to the secretary of defense and would require Senate confirmation.
The measure also puts more teeth into a 1982 statute on cost overruns, a law that has often been ignored in recent years, by shutting down any program that exceeds its original baseline by 50 percent unless it can be justified on national security or other reasons.
“We have to reduce the unnecessary gold plating of weapon systems,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich. “We have to bring the Department of Defense’s undisciplined requirements system under control.”
Levin, who sponsored the legislation with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that just two major weapons programs — the next-generation Joint Strike Fighter and the Future Combat System — have racked up cost overruns of $80 billion, with average unit costs now 40 percent above original estimates.
McCain noted that the Virginia class submarine has gone from an original estimate of $58 billion to $81 billion, while the cost of the F-22 fighter program, which Gates now plans to terminate, nearly doubled from its original cost estimate of $88 billion.
The Government Accountability Office said in a recent report that the Pentagon’s 97 largest acquisition programs are now recording cost overruns of almost $300 billion and the programs are an average of 22 months behind schedule.
Levin blamed the problems on the Pentagon relying on unrealistic cost and schedule estimates, establishing unrealistic performance expectations and insisting on the use of immature technologies.
Several watchdog groups, in a letter this week to the Armed Services committees, praised Congress for provisions in the House and Senate bills that would increase competition, elevate independent cost estimates and reduce conflicts of interest.
But the groups — Project on Government Oversight, National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense and U.S. PIRG — also pointed out that the problem is not in the rules but in the follow-through. Rules and controls are already in place, but “these rules are too frequently ignored or otherwise not followed,” they wrote.
Among the amendments accepted was one by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., that would give combat commanders a greater say in new weapons procurement programs.
The bill is S. 454.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
