Authorized by a strongly Democratic Congress, to the tune of Billions of our dollars. On display for your
despair edification over at
The Gormogons (which you really should be reading every day).
Just how much has the Democratic Party turned into the Party of Government? They won't even cut
Defense waste.
The flip side, at least in theory, is that having a second source for an item keeps the vendor from jacking up prices on proprietary products. It's very common in government purchasing, at all levels, to specify alternate sources.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, at least that's the theory. The reality is often that government entities will spend a dollar to save a nickel.
Didn't Ben Franklin say something about "penny wise and pound foolish"?
It would seem that government waste goes back at least to colonial times, but I'd bet that the Pharaohs had the same problem. The original design had the Pyramids being no bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle. :)
Having spent years in military procurement, let me tell you what really creates waste: Having Congress sticking its nose in on things like this. You can't buy components based on what you need, you have to make sure you buy them from the right Congressional districts. Major items get split up so that you can buy sub-sub-components from companies across enough districts.
ReplyDeleteCongress ought to get the hell out of the micromanagement business.