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Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste

justabubba

justabubba

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...b0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.acb6b836bfba

... The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.
The study was produced last year by the Defense Business Board, a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey and Company. Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. ...
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So the plan was killed. The Pentagon imposed secrecy restrictions on the data making up the study, which ensured no one could replicate the findings. A 77-page summary report that had been made public was removedfrom a Pentagon website. ...
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and here is where the DoD decided it did not like the report it had commissioned:
... He singled out a page in the report. Titled “Warfighter Currency,” it showed how saving $125 billion could be redirected to boost combat power. The money could cover the operational costs for 50 Army brigades, or 3,000 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, or 10 aircraft-carrier strike groups for the Navy.
“This is what scares me,” he said, according to the two people present. Work explained he was worried Congress might see it as an invitation to strip $125 billion from the defense budget and spend it somewhere else. ...
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get rid of the consultants, get rid of the report, and hope congress does not realize the pentagon is wasting $125 billion
 
Calm down, it's prolly our space lasers and forcefield defenses..
 
Those who have been paying any attention at all knows that Obama has done a terrible job running the government.....I does not care about quality or efficiency....he is way too cool for that jive.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Those who have been paying any attention at all knows that Obama has done a terrible job running the government.....I does not care about quality or efficiency....he is way too cool for that jive.
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You can't honestly believe this is a new problem, can you? I bet you think the VA was great at taking care of our veterans before Obama became President, too.
 
Jesse Booth said:
You can't honestly believe this is a new problem, can you? I bet you think the VA was great at taking care of our veterans before Obama became President, too.
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No, it is one of those things that needs some fairly constant attention, and has not gotten any for a long time. Look at the Pentagon buy programs, how poor they operate. We have known for years about Pentagon staff bloat but nobody hardly ever talks about doing something about it. Look at morale all through the government. Look at the ObamaCare website.

This problem is well out of control.

Obama had no interest.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
No, it is one of those things that needs some fairly constant attention, and has not gotten any for a long time. Look at the Pentagon buy programs, how poor they operate. We have known for years about Pentagon staff bloat but nobody hardly ever talks about doing something about it. Look at morale all through the government. Look at the ObamaCare website.

This problem is well out of control.

Obama had no interest.
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I don't think any President has had interest in this in decades. Possibly not since Eisenhower.

Eisenhower's Military-Industry Complex Warning, 50 Years Later : NPR
 
Jesse Booth said:
****ing beautiful. Gotta love systemic incompetence, amirite?
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It is the lack of interest in competence that is the bigger problem....it can only be from either stupidity or immorality on the part of our leaders, and I dont care much which one it is.

They need to get upgraded with new people, with guys like TRUMP!
 
justabubba said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...b0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.acb6b836bfba

and here is where the DoD decided it did not like the report it had commissioned:

get rid of the consultants, get rid of the report, and hope congress does not realize the pentagon is wasting $125 billion
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:) And this despite the fact that killing people and breaking things is actually something that the government does relatively well.



Yup. We should definitely put these people in charge of running our healthcare. They would no doubt be totes super-duper-efficient at it.
 
From the Woodward piece:

Work said the board fundamentally misunderstood how difficult it is to eliminate federal civil service jobs — members of Congress, he added, love having them in their districts — or to renegotiate defense contracts.​


Who was it a couple of weeks ago arguing that we needed to keep federal civil service tenure?




Also worth noting: simply because we are spending on things like Admin and Logistics doesn't make that spending wasted. You have to have that stuff or you can't fight.
 
Jesse Booth said:
You can't honestly believe this is a new problem, can you? I bet you think the VA was great at taking care of our veterans before Obama became President, too.
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Waste at the VA was built into the program by government fiat. The government mandates that public sector unions be recognized, and so operations there are subject to work rules and overtime rules. Nothing is budgeted for overtime, so hours are limited. A lot of potential capacity goes underutilized, so veterans have to wait longer to be seen, to get tests done, and all the rest. Employees who perform poorly are very hard to fire, so they keep their jobs until they create some sort of 4 alarm disaster.

Everything you don't like about the VA is, surprisingly enough, due to the way we that the people, through our government, run it.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
They need to get upgraded with new people, with guys like TRUMP!
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Oh yea.. .Im sure the massive increase in military spending which Trump calls for, none of that is going to go to waste. :roll:
 
cpwill said:
From the Woodward piece:

Work said the board fundamentally misunderstood how difficult it is to eliminate federal civil service jobs — members of Congress, he added, love having them in their districts — or to renegotiate defense contracts.​


Who was it a couple of weeks ago arguing that we needed to keep federal civil service tenure?




Also worth noting: simply because we are spending on things like Admin and Logistics doesn't make that spending wasted. You have to have that stuff or you can't fight.
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Ha! You said wood...
 
cpwill said:
From the Woodward piece:

Work said the board fundamentally misunderstood how difficult it is to eliminate federal civil service jobs — members of Congress, he added, love having them in their districts — or to renegotiate defense contracts.​


Who was it a couple of weeks ago arguing that we needed to keep federal civil service tenure?
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If we are going to have all these people working for the government then those jobs must be attractive to good people. They don't pay as much as the private sector, so perks are needed to retain employees. Tenure is one of those perks. Eliminate tenure and we'll be needing to pay them more. Or we could eliminate a lot of the programs altogether, but there are still some programs that we will need.

The service we get from the government is poor enough as it is. We don't need to be making it worse.
 
cpwill said:
Yup. We should definitely put these people in charge of running our healthcare. They would no doubt be totes super-duper-efficient at it.
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Oh CP, this is just sad for two reasons. First, you seem to have an emotional need to flail about Obamacare. Second, you either know that Obamacare does not put the govt in charge of our healthcare and you’re being completely dishonest or you’re just not very smart. And since you’re one of the smart ones (relatively speaking) I’ll just assume the former.

You should do some soul searching why you have an emotional need to flail about Obamacare and in a dishonest manner.
 
LowDown said:
If we are going to have all these people working for the government then those jobs must be attractive to good people. They don't pay as much as the private sector, so perks are needed to retain employees. Tenure is one of those perks. Eliminate tenure and we'll be needing to pay them more. Or we could eliminate a lot of the programs altogether, but there are still some programs that we will need.

The service we get from the government is poor enough as it is. We don't need to be making it worse.
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We'd be better off paying more for those positions, offering a mediocre health care plan similar to middle class jobs, and a 401(k). The legacy costs of retirees in our little municipality costs us more every year than the payroll of the people actually working.
 
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