The real “waste, fraud and abuse” in this country is coming from our Defense budget. Are you as tired as I am of hearing that the food program, or the poor, or our education system and so forth are the cause of our nation’s debt? We have Defense spending without any discernible accountability. The Pentagon admits that it cannot keep track of their spending. Really? Is that not why we have computers and if I’m not mistaken we’ve spent a whole lot of money on a computer system for the Pentagon. Maybe, this is just an excuse so the over spending is not transparent? One such example of how our money is wasted by the Pentagon is the recent expose’ over the $43,000,000.00 natural gas station in Afghanistan that should have cost $250-500,000.00, not $43,000,000.00 and that’s 8,000% over budget. Is there no mechanism within the Pentagon to flag these contracted projects that exceed their bid or contract costs? Is there no accountability? And where did the extra $42,500,000.00 go? Into who’s pocket?
Another great example is the now infamous F-35 fighter plane which was originally contract at a cost of $67 million per plane and is now $335 million each and still is not ready for flight. To date we’ve spent nearly $1.5 Trillion on just this one contract with no results.
Then, we see parking lots full of fighter planes or tanks that are not needed yet we still are receiving bids to build more? This is nothing more than a handout to defense contractors who are feeding their insatiable desire for more and higher profits year after year. Defense contractors are wiley people for they try and make sure that a component is manufactured in nearly every Congressional district in the country so that every member of Congress supports them regardless of party affiliation.
Another issue is that while the Defense budget is in the neighborhood of $600 billion annually, but a small percentage of that goes towards fighting worldwide terrorism and 100’s of millions are spent in the support of 5,000 nuclear weapons. Why do we need so many nukes? A handful would destroy the world. More waste.