If there’s one thing that both Republicans and Democrats in Congress agree on, it’s sending money into a black hole called the Pentagon. They know the Department of Defense can’t pass a financial audit. And what about the generals and admirals who should know where all that money goes? Congress is rewarding them with their first raises in three years.
Last week the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act passed the House and Senate by a combined vote was 466-50. It appropriates $619 billion for the fiscal year that started in October.
“Overall it’s a good defense bill,” Rep Don Young said in an interview with Alaska Dispatch News. “But I think the main thing it does is give the military personnel a raise” of 2.1 percent that he called “long overdue.”
In a way, Young is right. After Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011, annual raises to the military (as well as federal civilian employees) were kept below the rate of inflation. And for the past two years the pay of top ranking officers had been frozen at 2014 levels.
But cumulatively since 9/11, military pay has outrun inflation by 15 percent. By about 8 percent since Young has been in Congress. And all along service members haven’t had to worry about one of the biggest inflationary thorns on the public side. They pay no annual health insurance premium or co-payments for medical care.
Consider the compensation for an enlistee right out of high school. His starting pay, combined with a housing allowance if stationed in Juneau, and subsistence, is comparable to earning $18.50 an hour. That’s double Alaska’s minimum wage and about the same entry level pay for a carpenter or electrician.
A lieutenant right out of West Point would get a total of $5,100 a month if the army could send him here. That’s not too shabby either.
But my gripe is with the upper echelons of the officer corps. The annual salary of a Brigadier General, or a Coast Guard Captain, who has served at least 20 years, is $144,525. Subsistence and family housing allowances adds another $3,300 each month.
These are the men and women in command of divisions that can’t account for billions of dollars being spent every year. They’ve been trying since the Government Management Reform Act of 1994 was passed. It requires 24 executive departments and agencies of the federal government to audit their financial statements annually. Every agency except the Department of Defense has complied. And Congress had been told they haven’t.
According to congressional testimony by the General Accounting Office in 2011, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) lacks “reliable information needed to make sound decisions and report on the financial status and cost.” This delinquency has “adversely impacted its operational efficiency and mission performance in areas of major weapons system support and logistics” while leaving “the department vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse.”
This past summer, DoD’s Office of Inspector General reported that DFAS failed to adequately support $6.5 trillion in year-end adjustments.
Instead they’ve merely “plugged” numbers into their books, according to Scot Paltrow of Reuters. In a three-part investigative report written in 2013, he offers witness accounts of DFAS using these phony numbers. DoD is aware of the problem. “In its 2007 audit-readiness plan” he writes, “the Defense Department called on DFAS to eliminate plugs by June 2008.” It hasn’t happened.
Among other glaring deficiencies, Paltrow discovered serious problems with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). It’s a department-wide clearing house for purchasing, shipping and storing supplies “from airplane parts to zippers for uniforms.” Reading directly from Pentagon documents given to Congress, he found DLA “had $733 million worth of supplies and equipment on order that was already stocked in excess amounts on warehouse shelves.”
Of DLA’s $14 billion inventory, “probably half of that is excess to what we need” according to DLA’s director at that time. He was a Vice Admiral in the Navy. At that high rank he didn’t get a housing allowance. But he was still bringing home about $175,000 a year plus $3,000 to stock his refrigerator and freezer while not having to worry about health care costs.
It’s no wonder Congress was so agreeable to bailing out the banks in 2008. They’ve been accustomed to giving DoD a pass for its failures.
Like the banks, the Pentagon has enormous influence over Congress. It comes from lobbyists working for giant defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. Their sales people don’t talk to newly commissioned officers or enlisted personnel. They do business with the generals and admirals who are about to get a raise they neither need nor deserve.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
