Pentagon sticks to its wasteful ways

During last year's debate on the Defense Department's $400 billion budget request, Republicans in Congress were all in favor of reducing Congressional oversight on military spending. They bought into Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's argument that the scores of cost-benefit reports the department sent to Capitol Hill were a waste of time and money.
By contrast, Democrats argued that a department that could not account for $1 trillion in spending cannot be trusted to police itself. The Democrats were right.
As an Associated Press story revealed this week, the Pentagon shelled out about $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over a six-year period. But that isn't the worst of it. The department failed to seek refunds on the reimbursable tickets and paid employee claims for airline travel even though the federal government had bought the tickets.
The revelations are contained in two reports issued by Congress' General Accounting Office. To illustrate how easily the Pentagon paid for airline travel, congressional investigators posed as Defense employees, had the department generate a ticket and showed up at the ticket counter to pick up a boarding pass.
As Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, one of the lawmakers who ordered the GAO study on airline travel, commented, "It's outrageous that the Defense Department would be spending additional federal tax dollars to the airlines by way of unused passenger tickets. And the fact that the Defense Department didn't even know it was wasting money is even worse than the $100 million down a rathole."
Tip of the iceberg
As for Pentagon employees who received reimbursements, the GAO noted that a limited review of records for 2001 and 2002 identified 27,000 transactions totaling more than $8 million. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
It is clear that more, not less, congressional oversight of the Defense Department is warranted -- especially during this time of unprecedented military spending.
Remember that last year's $400 billion military budget request did not include the $35 billion that President Bush sought for the Iraq occupation and did not pay for the war on global terrorism or homeland security. Agencies such as the FBI and CIA are picking up the tab for those activities.
Because of the way the White House has couched the war on terrorism -- critics are labeled unpatriotic or worse -- there has been a reluctance in Congress to demand accountability on the part of the Pentagon. Rumsfeld is one of the architects of the war in Iraq and a member of the president's inner circle. As such, he wields a great deal of influence among Republicans in the House and Senate.
Sen. Grassley's criticism of the airline travel spending is rare, indeed, from a member of the majority party. Thus it is deserving of praise.
The administration must not be given a blank check -- even if the money is to be used in the war on global terrorism. As the $61 million overcharge for fuel in Iraq by a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney used to head, has shown, an independent review of the Pentagon's spending habits is essential.