Waste of a Speech

James Carafano / March 05, 2009

Yesterday, President Obama declared that in addition to solving all of the country’s other ills that he was going to eliminate government waste. His target—defense spending. “I want to focus on one particular example, and that is the situation in defense contracting.”

This was a speech I long expected. Our government should, of course, take every responsible measure to ensure it is a good steward of our tax dollars and provide the best support for our men and women in uniform. But, I suspect that is not what is going on here. And here is why. Government already has lots of tools available to fight fraud, waste, and abuse. They just have to use them. Doing the kinds of reform the president’s suggest will actually add more bureaucracy to the process—making the ways government buys things less not more efficient. So why is the president making these promises—I suspect it is cover to just cut defense spending—and then claim those cuts are really savings.

There are real ways to make the way the Pentagon buys things more efficient. We outlined them in a Heritage paper (Defense Spending Fraud, Waste, and Abuse: Hype, Reality, and Real Solutions) months ago because we suspected the new administration would try a tactic just like this. (more…)