Heritage Foundation Paper on Defense Fraud and Efficiencies

The Heritage Foundation has a good, short paper on fraud and inefficiencies in the Defense Budget written by Dr. James Jay Carafano. The paper is located here. Anytime a new administration takes over there is a focus on saving money by doing things better and cutting out fraud in government budgets. The defense budget and procurement process has been reviewed and reformed several times since 1960 alone, not even counting efforts during and after World War I and II. Unfortunately many of these efforts fail or make little difference due to the priorities used by Congress and the Department of Defense in procurement.

As Dr. Carafano states “There are no simple solutions to meeting the press­ing fiscal demands for defense. Even if it were possi­ble to identify and eliminate all unnecessary spending, total savings would not come close to clos­ing the gap for what is required for maintaining a trained and ready force, funding current operations, and preparing for the future.” Fraud and abuse make up little of the total costs of the budget. The major issue is that the Department of Defense buys things ethically and with extraneous requirements on the programs. Programs take a long time to develop and enter into production as that is how the system is set up. There are many reviews and a focus on minimizing mistakes. Dr. Carafano recommends increasing the size of the acquisition work force, reducing regulation and allowing programs to manage themselves. He writes “The Defense Department must be allowed to break free from the risk-averse behavior patterns that undermine innovation, slow the acquisition process, and result in inefficiency and inevitable cost-overruns.” I heartily agree.