Stephen:

Just wondering if you consider wasteful spending to be projects that don't pan out or those that are later cancelled because of costs or changed circumstances.

I agree that there is a tremendous amount of wasteful spending in the budget [pick any department, not just DoD], and there is even wasteful spending in black budgets, but characterizing "black spending" as "wasteful spending" seems to be overreaching.

Um...

How did "often means" become "means" in your mind?

"Super-secret"? How much is going to super duper secret programs.
I agree that there is waste and that there is always going to be waste, but then we get things like the F-117 and B-2 (who's total cost for R&D get folded back into the purchase price). I also have a hunch that some of the wasteful spending, even for things like $100 hammers are actually cover for money going to other things, such as coups and what not.

There's also the factor that not only do we have more "black" projects, but the definition of classified is getting wider and wider. Things that may not have been classified before have been moved into that category.

Like auditing on non-black items makes any difference with Gov't wasteful spending?

Wasteful spending is so wide spread at all levels, and so fundamentally common, that its hardly noticeable anymore. Anyone with a private sector background and who interacts with the Federal Government in Washington for a living knows of what I speak.

There's tons of small stuff that's classified for the military on the small scale. Things like the computer programs on officers' laptops that they use to track their infantry soldiers - they exist, that's not classified - but the actual programs, and their code, is. The R&D to develop and deploy them is.

Could we have a discussion of the fact that the "overpriced hammer" was not true? I think it was 'Independence Day' that we have that to thank for...

A lot of the "overpriced" stuff is true. Well sort of. There are some very expensive tools in the inventory, but the government is not paying $100 for a craftsman hammer you could by for $10 at Sears. It is paying serious money for a hammer forged from pure unobtanium.

It must be made from pure unobtanium in order to hit what needs to be hit without causing Bad Things to happen. Unobtanium is non-sparking (because it is used near flamables) and non-magnetic (because it is used near magnetics) and non-conductive (because it is used near exposed wiring) and is really great at getting the hammer-swinger chicks (hey honey is that the unobtanium hammer why don't you come back to my place?).

And those unobtanium hammers? Well there are 4 of them in the entire military, so no economies of scale here. They were forged from an unobtanium billet by a master toolsmith. He is the only person in the world who can actually forge unobtanium and he needs even more expensive tools than the unobtanium hammer to do it. And he doesn't work cheap because he has a new Harley to pay off and he knows he's the only guy in the world that can forge unobtanium in the first place.

Not that there isn't wasteful spending the military mind you. Checked to see how much the military is spending on golf courses lately?

I don't mind the golf courses, our soldiers should have good recreation opportunities. Plus the ones in foreign countries can help to undermine those nations by introducing more decedant American culture (yeah, I know it's a Scottish game) plus frustrate their elite. Sort of like exporting Hollywood movies. Bwahahaha.
FWIW, I don't think there were $100 hammers, they were $10, the other $90 went to other programs we don't know about.

Re: $100 hammers....

I'll bet there have been some $100 hammers and some $400 toilet seats and all the rest. To understand, you have to realize how the government buys things.

The government will decide that it needs, say, a little calculator that flight officers can use to make simple calculations. The first thing that happens is that requirements expand. Suddenly, it has to be progammable. And it's got to be waterproof. Oh, and it's got to withstand a fall to concrete from eight feet. All of this adds up and becomes a formal specification.

By the time the poor contractor gets the job, they're often faced with a stack of paper a mile high specifying what the product will do. Worse, there are often extensive specs about the tests the product must pass before it will be accepted.

So, the contractor first pays a group of people to understand the spec. Then they pay them to design the product and manufacture it. Then they build all of the specialized test equipment and test it. The design probably has to be tweaked a couple of times to meet the spec (or else the spec is renegotiated with the government).

Finally, after all of this, the flight officers get their calculators. Sure, they cost more than a full-blown laptop by the time it's all said and done, but that's the way the government does it.

All of this is why I no longer work for a government contractor: it drives you nuts.

Of course from the government side of things, if they didn't spec everything out to the nth degree they would get a pink barbie calculator the contractor picked up surplus from Mattel. It wouldn't do anything they wanted but it would do it very cheaply and that is great when the government is required by law to go with the lowest bidder.

I think DC Carter has it right.
The entire Gov't. spending process is fundamentally wasteful and wide open for abuse.
In my work with gov't. agencies, both military and non-military, I have been shocked.

Rob: Damn straight!

The only step you neglected to mention was the 8 month military think tank study on how other government agencies develop and deploy pocket calculators, and if used in a foreign country, can it be left behind to build capacity.

Tim P: Shocked? I'm stupefied. And I thought Banks and Insurance Companies had wasteful spending...

It's a big, bad world out there. Let's hope that some of the super-secret R&D translates into gonzo systems that keeps the U.S. one step ahead.

It's a big, bad world out there. Let's hope that some of the super-secret R&D translates into gonzo systems that keeps the U.S. one step ahead.

There was an episode of the West Wing a couple years back where Donna was talking with a Navy guy played by Christian Slater.

She makes some joke about his ashtray, which he kept as souvenir from a sub he was on, costing $200 or some such.

He smashes it with a hammer and it breaks into three dull pieces. He explains that when torpedos are going off and the boat is rocking like crazy you don't need shards of glass flying through the air. "We live a different kind of life out there, it costs a little more."

I'm sure the example was contrived, but I'd wager it's based in truth.

The idea that you can smoke on submarines though? That's pretty ridiculous.

well.. not that ridiculous technically to smoke on a sub.. politically not good, but there's no big reason you can't smoke on a sub, since nuke boats produce their own air.

now on a diesel sub.. yeah there's a good reason!!!

There is technology flying over your heads at 150K feet right now, watching for nukes in ships and our cities, and therefore worth its weight in gold. $150 hammers sound stupid until you realize that they are a real good way to hide that spending.

FWIW, I don't think there were $100 hammers, they were $10, the other $90 went to other programs we don't know about."

I don't mind the DoD having a budget for "secret" projects because I'm hoping at least at some level there is some oversight, perhaps by a congressional committee. Using $100 hammers to hide spending scares me because it seems like the government could hide lots of stuff it shouldn't be doing from any sort of scrutiny.

Umm, having peered into the abyss of corporate and academic procurement, I would not be too harsh on the military. At least not yet.

ALL procurement is expensive. If workers are going to have things like staplers, and the employer is expected to pay for the staplers -- but at the same time, the employer has assurances that he's not getting ripped off in the process -- then every organization will insist that there has to be some sort of procedure around buying staplers.

Procedures cost money. LOTS of money. The $10 stapler on your desk at work probaby cost at least $60: $10 for the stapler and $50 or more for the paperwork required to buy the stapler.

That's why corporate America got excited about buying expensive software (e.g. Ariba) to cut those costs. Every dollar saved in procurement, incidentally, goes right to the bottom line, which makes CFO types salivate.

So yeah, I'm sure DoD procurement is wasteful, but the question is, is it significantly more wasteful than anyone else's procurement process? (And if so, are there good reasons for that, e.g. the shatterproof ashtrays above? Or more realistically, a sand-proof and dust-proof notebook computer with specially encrypted wifi?)

Oh, and now I'm straying out of my field, but it seems to me

(1) that the US has for years pursued a strategy that "people are expensive, stuff is cheap." And this is quite true for a rich country like the US.

(2) that the US military is a bargain. We spend, what, $300-400B out of a $10T economy, and (unlike, say, secondary education) we get a world-leading result for our investment.

Got to aggree with Jeff the Baptist & Robb, but not Nash.

Given what government contractors have told me about their business (1) I'm pretty sure that those $100 dollar hammers actually cost the government $100, not $10 with $90 spent on "secret stuff" & (2) the odds are that the contractor lost money on them.

Read "Blind Man's Bluff" about the submarine war with the Soviets, and you will find out that the $400 toilet seats didn't cost $400, the mark up went into black projects, such as developing cable taps to put on underwater telephone cables, and modifying submarines so they could 'land' on the bottom of the ocean while the frogmen did their work.

And that's just the stuff that got into print.

Also, read "Man of War Life'*, I forget the author's name, but it is about a voyage around the world by the USS Columbus in the 1840's. The author, a young boy, has to buy his uniform, and ends up with the cheapest, most wrthless piece of crap imaginable. There is a reason for that twenty page contract detailing the specifications for a tee-shirt, and that reason is the government has to buy its stuff from humans, with all THAT implies.

*Naval Institute Press

The $400 toilet seats were custom seats for use in aerospace, you special spill proof needs.

It isn't at all hard to believe that an aircraft toilet seat or coffee maker would cost hundreds of dollars. I own a '67 Piper Cherokee, a simple 38 year old private plane. The only cheap thing about the plane is the air in the tires, and that's only because the FAA hasn't found a way to certify air. EVERYTHING about aircraft is expensive, and that goes double for military aircraft with limited production numbers and rigorous operating environments.

Consider the stink raised back in the 1980s about paying thousands of dollars for coffee makers on transport planes. First, they probably weren't any more expensive than the ones used on commercial airliners. There are all sorts of safety requirements for electrical components (especially those filled with water) for aircraft that don't apply to most surface vehicles. You can't go to Wal Mart and buy a good aircraft coffee maker from Mr. Coffee. It just doesn't work.

Taillights for tanks cost upwards of several hundred dollars the last time I was around them. A large part of that was due to the necessity of having them be electrically shielded. Wouldn't do to have a multi-million dollar fire control system get fried by a nearby nuke emp that gained entry through the taillight wiring.

On the minus side, no one ever bothered to buy us a coffee pot, at any price. And we have yet to design a hatch seal that won't leak in the rain. If we can keep the air *in* a shuttle, how come we can't keep the rain *out* of a tank? ;)

Having worked on occasion for milspec suppliers, I can relate, from experience, what drives military costs. You are working on a five pound widget, that goes into an gollywonkus assembly of widgets, that will be used for some necessary military task. The part arrives on a pallet, along with 200 lbs of paperwork, asking such vital questions as does your employer have segregated restrooms /dining facilities ...have you ever felt harrassed on the job ...(this is a good one)do you know of any illegal activities. These forms have to be filled out and signed by shop personel. DAILY.
We routinely charged 10X prices over what was supplied to regular commercial customers. Yes, there were regular versions of these items, yes they were identical to the military versions, and no they wouldn't buy them that way.

For what it's worth, when I was a submariner (eight years ago), you could smoke on the boat underway - you just had to do it down in AMR1LL, right by the inlet to the atmosphere scrubbers. I'm told that back in the day you could smoke just about anywhere on the boat so long as a battery charge wasn't in progess (the batteries release hydrogen gas while charging.)

J. Wilde — Smoking was only banned on subs about the time it was banned navy-wide.

My own personal military spending story... I work for a small press publisher. A military school on Guam wanted to order one of our books for their library. The stack of paper to process the order was thicker than the 200 page book. Pretty sure I know where some of that price tag comes from.

With all due respect, I worked on the contractor side of procurement for many years and much of the mythology issued forth on $400 hammers, massive waste and abuse, etc., are generally populist drivel built on a few carefully selected data points by people who aren't familiar with the arcane minutiae of federal procurement.

Yes, there is undoubtedly some fraud and abuse as there will be in anything this large with this much money involved, but the numbers are much, much lower than you imagine. The primary culprit in why things the government buys cost so much is because Congress mandates that they do through the regulations surrounding procurement. Pick up a copy of the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations) and all its amendments for some light reading. And you probably thought the tax code was bad. With the best of intentions (gee, where have I heard that before) to make sure that fraud and abuse are "eliminated" from federal procurements, it sometimes seems that the government would spend a dollar to make sure there wasn't a nickel lost. I believe the old English aphorism of pennywise and pound foolish best fits here.

And then of course, you also have to appreciate that a lot of that "black" money goes towards R&D projects, some of which don't pan out. Of course, if you insist on everything working out, you're never going to get much done or make any truly revolutionary discoveries.

I don't have a problem with righteous indignation over waste and abuse involving tax dollars, but make sure you aim your animus towards the real culprits.

Steve,
I am worth every dime....