Pentagon Should Take Lead in Showing How to be Efficient with Taxpayer Money ⋆ Michael Busler, Ph.D. is a public policy analyst and a Professor of Finance at Stockton University where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Finance and Economics. ⋆ Flag And Cross
Congress might want to look at saving money, instead of finding creative ways to spend it. There are a number of problems with the current trajectory of spending in the federal government. Problem number one is that the current Congress is spending time to find ways to spend more money they don’t have without giving any consideration to making government more efficient to help offset the cost of new programs. Another problem is the growing debt that is approaching $30 trillion in total with this year expected to pile on more than of $3 trillion in new debt.
Many economists agree that the current federal spending spree is mind boggling. Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute estimates that the Biden Build Back Better proposal is likely to “cost nearly $5 trillion over the decade,” because of accounting gimmics like the “bill’s authors included a December 2025 expiration of the $130 billion annual expansion of the child tax credit to $3,000 per child (or $3,600 for children under the age of 6).” Dan Mitchell wrote for the Club for Growth “this massive spending increase will divert resources from the economy’s productive sector, and it will be partly financed by punitive, class-warfare taxes that penalize work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.” The bottom line is that spending is accelerating while the federal government largely ignores the debt crisis and makes little effort to find efficiencies in existing government programs.
Right now the government is running existing programs on a continuing resolution .That causes separate efficiency problems. The Continuing Resolution, (CR) is keeping current spending at large deficit levels for the next few months. Also operating under a CR causes inefficientcy in government contracting. The Pentagon is waiting to learn how much it will have to spend in this current fiscal year which puts all new contracting on hold.
Right now, the Air Force is working to replace its refueling tanker fleet. These aircraft serve the important purpose of conducing in-flight refueling from the tanker to the aircraft to keep our flying defenses airborn longer. The Air Force is in the process of developing a next generation tanker system in a decade or so. Until then, it needs about 150 “bridge tankers” to fill the gap. The good news is that it doesn’t need to spend anything to test them. It’s already invested more than $1.5 billion testing out the KC-46 Pegasus jet, and that plane is ready to do the job.
Unless the Air Force decides they want to embrace inefficiency by starting over with a foreign designed tanker, the European tanker, made by the French compay Airbus, is the only other plausible “bridge tanker.” This is so because the Air Force has set out exacting parameters that only two manufacturers are in position to meet. The tankers must be based on “existing and emerging technologies,” for example.