WASHINGTON, May 22 – Congress unanimously passed a bill to reform how the Pentagon purchases weapons systems that President Obama has now signed into law. The law aims to increase accountability and transparency throughout the weapons acquisition process.
“We commend the Administration, leaders on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Congress on their attempt to clean up a process that’s been rife with wasteful spending, costly delays and poor program management,” said Nicole Tichon, U.S. PIRG Tax and Budget Reform Analyst.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Defense weapons programs experienced nearly $300 billion in cost overruns and were delayed on average by 21 months. To that end, leaders on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees moved to unanimously pass their bills to reform the process and quickly reconcile the differences.
U.S. PIRG, along with Project on Government Oversight (POGO), National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense, sent a detailed letter to Armed Services Committee leaders to make sure that their reform principles were preserved in penning the final legislation. The final bill included key principles, such as the establishment of a Director of Independent Cost Assessment, increased scrutiny of programs experiencing critical cost growth, greater transparency around the use of waivers to get around rules, and minimum standards for new conflict of interest directives.
“This is one way to honor our men and women in uniform this Memorial Day. If the law is implemented with strong oversight, efforts to support our military will be less susceptible to scandalous cost over-runs, fraud and insider influence,” Tichon said. “Rules are only as effective as their enforcement, but this is a good first step.”
POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian added, "This law gives the Pentagon and Congress tools to restore discipline to major weapon systems, but there won't be a real impact unless DoD and Congress start following the rules and holding program managers accountable when those rules are broken.”
##
U.S. PIRG, federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, is a non-profit,non-partisan public interest advocacy organization.
