Ashton Carter: Americans Are Disgusted with Government Waste

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/02/05/Ashton-Carter-Americans-Are-Disgusted-Government-Waste

Ashton Carter: Americans Are Disgusted with Government Waste
By Eric Pianin,
The Fiscal Times
February 5, 2015

President Obama’s choice for Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, was refreshingly candid during his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday when he said the American people were justified in being -fed up with wasteful Pentagon spending.

~snip~

Carter’s comments were unusual for a department that has wasted or squandered untold billions and not once provided a complete independent accounting of where its money has gone. Distant controversies over $600 toilet seats and multi-million-dollar cost overruns on weaponry seem quaint by today’s standards, in light of cost overruns of $100 billion or more to develop the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and tens of billions more for the highly flawed Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The ship was meant to be a next-generation asset for the Navy but has suffered from structural cracks, propulsion problems, and computer and communications issues.

The Pentagon has also had a penchant for wretched excess in ordering equipment and weaponry for new conflicts. As former Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual government waste report found, the DOD wound up destroying 170 million pounds worth of usable vehicles and other military equipment in Afghanistan. Overall, 20 percent of all military equipment in Afghanistan, valued at $7 billion, was scrapped rather than returned to the U.S. or sold to the Afghans.

The Pentagon said it would have been too costly to ship home the equipment. Moreover, they might have hurt defense contractors domestically by driving down prices of equipment overseas.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Lockheed Carter is playing to the crowd. I wouldn't trust this clown

as far as I can throw him. Obama is basically abandoning the Pentagon to the people who own it, in exchange for some sort of political gain for rudely dumping Hagel. You don't have Joe Lieberman sitting behind you for "support" at your hearing unless you are a real piece of work. BTW, Carter was in charge of most of the waste he now decries, being that he lived at the Pentagon off and on for 20 years and was #2.

[bemildred]

2. "And you may be sure, Congressman, that I won't do Jack Shit about it." nt