The Pentagon routinely spends billions on construction with flawed cost analysis and minimal oversight
Evidence
Repeatedly, one sees the Pentagon making decisions to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars based on incomplete data, shoddy math, little or no attempt to consider cheaper alternatives, and cost analyses that appear to be either incompetent or intentionally manipulated. A long, regular stream of GAO reports provides abundant evidence of the problems. Unfortunately, each report appears in isolation, and they generally portray the problems as unrelated incidents. Rarely does anyone point out the larger pattern: the Pentagon, the armed services, and many of their component parts are spending many, many billions of MilCon dollars with what frequently appears to be a willful disregard for costs and the law and little or no oversight by Congress. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 812
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to themes of unchecked military bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about, developed further in the book.
- SEED: Angle: why GAO reports are issued in isolation so the systemic pattern of MilCon profligacy never gets corrected — a study of institutional learning failure.
Related
- Pentagon military construction spending routinely disregards costs and law with little Congressional oversight (similarity 0.93)
- Even pro-base analysts describe Pentagon construction as an unbounded bureaucratic machine (similarity 0.86)
- Military construction spending is so profligate it is out of control (similarity 0.85)
- Pentagon construction requests repeatedly lack basic cost documentation (similarity 0.84)
- U.S. combatant commanders make basing decisions without access to cost data. (similarity 0.83)
- Pentagon cost estimates for the Guam buildup are grossly unreliable (similarity 0.82)
- The Pentagon lacked basic documentation for its billion-dollar hospital funding requests. (similarity 0.81)
- Military construction at unspecified locations likely falls mostly overseas. (similarity 0.80)
- Military contractors cost two to three times more than Pentagon civilians doing identical work. (similarity 0.80)
- The Pentagon is the only federal agency that cannot pass a financial audit (similarity 0.79)
- Overseas base maintenance costs taxpayers over $100 billion annually (similarity 0.79)
- Army savings estimates for base moves have been inflated and poorly documented. (similarity 0.79)
- Base infrastructure spending grew triple the rate deployment numbers justify (similarity 0.79)
- Pentagon officials spend all allocated funds or risk losing future budgets (similarity 0.79)
- Military spending creates fewer jobs per billion than social investments (similarity 0.78)