A report set to be unveiled today on waste in wartime contracting is being used by a prominent lawmaker as an argument in favor of cutting defense spending during the upcoming round of federal budget cuts.
The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting, a congressionally chartered group that has been holding hearings and traveling to theater for two years, found more than $30 billion has been lost in efforts tied to contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan because of waste and fraud. Co-chairs Michael Thibault, a previous deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, and Christopher Shays, a former GOP congressman, previewed the findings of the 240-page report in Monday’s Washington Post.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) quickly seized upon the report to argue that the 12-member congressional committee that will meet this fall to find up to $1.5 trillion in federal budget cuts should slash defense spending.
“This alarming finding (regarding the $30 billion in contracting waste) is just one more reason our nation needs stronger oversight of defense spending–so that taxpayer dollars can be spent efficiently on keeping our country safe and fulfilling our military’s missions,” Hoyer said in a statement. “As the bipartisan select committee on deficit reduction begins its work, it is essential that the committee’s members focus on all of the contributors to our deficit, on both the revenue and spending sides. The findings…remind us that all of our nation’s spending, including defense spending, deserve to be closely scrutinized.”
His comments come in stark contract to those from Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee, who have argued that further defense reductions would, among other things, enhance China’s global military clout.
The new federal deficit-cutting law President Barack Obama signed Aug. 2 calls for slashing $350 billion in defense-related spending over the next decade and creates a new committee of 12 lawmakers that will try to find up to $1.5 trillion in additional government savings. If this so-called super committee and the full Congress can’t agree on those second-round cuts by the end of this year, defense spending–defined mainly as the Pentagon budget–will be slashed by an additional $500 billion or $600 billion.
The eight-member Commission on Wartime Contracting, meanwhile, for more than two and a half years has been investigating the U.S. government’s use of civilian contractors for war-related activities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“All eight commissioners agree that major changes in law and policy are needed to avoid confusion and waste in the next (military) contingency, whether it involves armed struggle overseas or response to disasters at home,” Thibault and Shays wrote in the Post. “Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted through poor planning, vague and shifting requirements, inadequate competition, substandard contract management and oversight, lax accountability, weak interagency coordination, and subpar performance or outright misconduct by some contractors and federal employees.”
They argued that both “government and contractors need to do better.”
The final report, they said, includes 15 recommendations for improving contingency contracting. Those include making “more rigorous use of risk analysis when deciding to use contractors,” instead of simply contracting out any task not on a list of so-called inherently-governmental functions.
The commission was established through legislation introduced by Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
Also this week, the investigative news organization The Center for Public Integrity published a report finding the Pentagon’s non-competitive contracting nearly tripled during the past 10 years of war, to a value of more than $140 billion in 2010.