Military-Industrial Complex Planning to Use Taxpayer Dollars to Lobby for Waste
Spencer Ackerman reports on defense contractors gearing up for battle with the Obama administration:
One Pentagon official expects much more of that as the services and the defense industry push back against reform. Their “ground game,” the official said, will be run from the services’ legislative outreach and public-affairs offices, feeding talking points and strategy information to sympathetic members of Congress — something that “got the services in trouble in 2002″ with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when the Army resisted his ultimately-successful plan to scrap an archaic artillery system called Crusader. An “air game” will feature “a lot of ominous whispers on background to the press and conservative think tanks and commentators about endangering the American people and costing lives in some future fight.”
Gates, whom Obama tasked with working closely with OMB, has told confidantes that he views a sustainable long-term rebalancing of defense priorities as one of his most important tasks now that Obama has given him the chance to continue on as Pentagon chief. His service under the Bush administration was more about supporting the immediate needs of the Iraq war after Bush fired Rumsfeld in November 2006. “The services are accustomed to reviews that start out with a lot of talk about setting priorities and making tough choices but in reality usually end with leaving everything more or less intact,” the Pentagon official said. “This time they have a secretary who really means it.”
Note that “the services’ legislative outreach and public-affairs offices” are technically part of the United States government. Indeed, they’re technically not supposed to be doing any lobbying at all. In fact, they regularly lobby congress against positions taken by the civilian leadership of the United States and on behalf of the defense contractors they’re hoping will employ them post-retirement.
28 Responses to “Military-Industrial Complex Planning to Use Taxpayer Dollars to Lobby for Waste”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
March 5th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Ummm, we’ve always paid the Defense Department to rip us off. That’s their job. When they stop ripping us off, that will be news.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
I feel like complaining about the “Military Industrial Complex” is really poor framing for this issue. So many wackjobs have adopted the phrase “Military Industrial Complex” that its use in a serious context brings up bad associations (and yes, I know a former US President coined the phrase. That’s irrelevant). Plus, it includes the word “military” and arguing against the military isn’t a frame that lends itself to wide adoption in public discourse.
Can we start calling wasteful spending by weapon’s contractors something more like “Private Arms Dealers” or something? It’s a lot easier to argue against that than the “Military Industrial Complex” After all, progressives have been railing against the “Military-Industrial Complex” for years and gotten nowhere.
March 5th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
So define “legislative outreach and public affairs” spending as “waste fraud and abuse” and zero it out? I’m sure those folks would be outstanding latrine cleaners. This seems like a pretty good use of the “unitary executive” powers of the commander in chief…
March 5th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I didn’t realize that the services could lobby against their civilian leaders, and I’m actually pretty outraged by it. I’m with Jed H. Zero it out.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Technically speaking Congress is (part of) the Civilian leadership, and has jurisdiction over budget issues. So in the strictest sense they’re not going behind leadership’s back, they’re keeping the paymasters informed.
(yes, of course it’s lobbying, just saying.)
March 5th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
It would seem to me that if Obama cared enough about this lobbying, he could probably stop it. This is where being commander-in-chief has real bite– if he had his staff draft a direct order to everyone in the Pentagon to stop it (by, say, defining strictly under what circumstances they are allowed to talk to members of Congress or direct others to do so), and making the penalty for disobeying the order an immediate dishonorable discharge.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I think it’s the last paragraph of MY’s post that’s the most inflammatory and, if true, the biggest problem. Keeping people in Congress advised of what’s going on is fine, but it’s just another example of the revolving door that we have.
I’m tired of people using the public purse to secure themselves jobs after public service. I don’t fault people for staying in the same industry, but sometimes it’s just sleazy.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Remember when MattY was all riled up about getting a democrat in Gates job? This is why it’s better with a Republican in the position, like it or not a Democrat would not be allowed to fight the power on this. That’s more important long term than proving that Dems can hold the position.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
It’s a shame; Donald Rumsfeld would have been a pretty good peacetime Secretary of Defense.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Re Spencer Ackerman’s comment “something that “got the services in trouble in 2002″ with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when the Army resisted his ultimately-successful plan to scrap an archaic artillery system called Crusader.”
—————-
archaic?
Can someone tell me how many years Spencer spent in the Army’s infantry platoons? How many times he was on an active battlefield?
What is it about pundits that makes them think simply residing in Washington DC has turned them into military geniuses? Are there some kind of mysterious emanations from the Pentagon that transformed Spencer into Sun Tzu overnight?
That made him competent to even have an opinion on how to find a latrine in the Pentagon much less render judgment on a military system?
March 5th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
But maybe the Crusader cancellation was a good decision — maybe it was better that our soldiers ended up with a low-yield, highly unreliable and intermittent system of artillery called the F22 fighter. Only cost what — $62 BILLION?
March 6th, 2009 at 12:06 am
indeed, they’re technically not supposed to be doing any lobbying at all.
‘One pentagon official’ is ‘technically’ not supposed to talk to the press either (in fact that’s ‘technically’ the public affairs office job)
Anyhoo,
1) this stuff ain’t new.
2) this stuff isn’t quite as diabolical and malevolent as you make it seem.
3) even if it is, as others have said, Obama is the gorram president of the United States; you think he needs to be afraid of some O-6’s?
4) it’s another example of how you deliver much deserved skepticism toward the DoD, but you don’t do it to any other department. There all run the same way, the military is just bigger and You don’t think the astronomy, pig manure and beaver control people also pushed for their money? Granted at half the discretionary budget the military deserves the most scrutiny. But you always assume everyone else has already made a prima facie case that their spending is worth it.
A previous post mentioned that there was a case for more stimulus in excess of a trillion. So if you just want to spend money the Pentagon likely has more ’shovel ready’ projects than anyone else. Just as an example, the nuclear submarine build rate is around one a year. It been proposed on and off to bump that to two a year, (it was the plan during Clinton to have done so by now) but iirc hasn’t been approved. You want to instantly create a bunch of high paying union jobs in Southern New England and Southeast Virginia? There it is.
It’s worthwhile reviewing where the bloated defense budget comes from. Sure the military likes shiny toys (who doesn’t?), the contractors like money (who doesn’t?) but the congresscritters like jobs. And surprisingly a lot of those jobs are in the blue states (esp for navy contracts – navy’s on the coast after all right there with the coastal elitists). Even when the pentagon says, ‘you know we don’t really need this’ somebody on the Hill will wind up putting in the appropriation anyway.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Can someone tell me how many years Spencer spent in the Army’s infantry platoons? How many times he was on an active battlefield?
What is it about pundits that makes them think simply residing in Washington DC has turned them into military geniuses?
First of all, Crusader is an artillery weapon, which means that spending time in the infantry wouldn’t really be relevant.
Second: yes, Crusader was archaic. It was designed for the Cold War. It was far too heavy, over-armoured, inaccurate, needed an (unarmoured) bulldozer to dig it in and move it anywhere, chewed up road surfaces like an MBT, and was too bloody expensive. It also didn’t do anything that the army’s existing 105s and 155s couldn’t do. And it needed a C-17 to move it anywhere; you can sling a 105 under a helicopter.
Crusader was a POS. Take it from a gunner.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I like the “Ripping off our troops” phrasing. Accusing defense contracters of ripping us off is answerd by “it’s for the troops”. If we accuse them of ripping off the troops, they can’t answer that way.
I realize it isn’t logical, but that doesn’t matter much.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Re Ajay’s comment “First of all, Crusader is an artillery weapon, which means that spending time in the infantry wouldn’t really be relevant.”
—————
Actually, service in the infantry is the only thing that is relevant–that’s why I mentioned it. The whole purpose of the big toys is to support the guys with the rifles. Ask the infantry where they would spend the money — on the Air Force for F22 close air support or on more and bigger arty.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:18 am
PS You may be correct that Crusader was ill-advised. My point was that Spencer Ackerman is not qualified to render that judgment.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Archaic is the wrong word. Obsolete is more accurate. It was a very impressive piece of equipment that no longer had a mission.
Its mission required it to be in place, in a theater with the possibility of rapidly shifting lines, against a massive, technologically comparable enemy. In other words, its only economical use was fighting the USSR in Europe. The arguments people make against the F-22 are even more applicable when used against the Crusader.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:33 am
There all run the same way, the military is just bigger and You don’t think the astronomy, pig manure and beaver control people also pushed for their money?
I’ve never seen an astronomer appear on Meet the Press telling me I’m going to die if we don’t build a telescope, or biologist telling me we’re all going to die if we don’t knock down some beaver damns.
On the other hand, An “air game” will feature “a lot of ominous whispers on background to the press and conservative think tanks and commentators about endangering the American people and costing lives in some future fight.”
March 6th, 2009 at 9:41 am
PS You may be correct that Crusader was ill-advised. My point was that Spencer Ackerman is not qualified to render that judgment.
So even though you knew nothing about the topic, you just felt you had to comment. You say Spencer Ackerman is not qualified to make a judgment, but what qualifications do you have to make a judgment? It seems that if Spencer Ackerman did a smidgen of research he would have more qualifications to judge than you.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:27 am
We;; in my county, the Socialist Government Workers Union does the same. Besides, I thought the new mantra was “Waste is good”.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Mormon crickets, beaver management and a host of other programs are ok, but defense programs as a general rule are not? There are a whole lot of bad people out there who need to be killed and an unmanageable beaver isn’t going to do the trick.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Its mission required it to be in place, in a theater with the possibility of rapidly shifting lines, against a massive, technologically comparable enemy. In other words, its only economical use was fighting the USSR in Europe.
I’m not an artillery expert, but it seems to me that the first sentence could also describe, say, defending Taiwan against Chinese invasion. Which is a remote but not impossible contingency – and being visibly well prepared for it arguably makes it remoter. (Or defending Japan ditto, even more remote, but still not impossible.) For that matter, Russia itself has proven quite capable of invading nearby countries, or regions, or whatever you want to call them.
Of course what you really need to look at is its usefulness *relative to other systems you could be developing*, or if you haven’t even decided on an overall level of military R&D funding, relative to other things you could be doing with X billion dollars of tax money.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Ah, conservative foreign policy doctrine.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Mormon crickets, beaver management and a host of other programs are ok, but defense programs as a general rule are not?
I haven’t the foggiest idea what this is supposed to be in response to. Has anybody made the claim that “defense programs as a general rule are not” ok?
Who?
Where?
The post?
One of the comments?
What are you TALKING ABOUT?
March 6th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
During the last campaign I often wondered why nobody talked about McCains initial exposure to politics being as the Navy’s “Senate Liason”, eg, the Navy lobbiest. Eisenhower warned of the “Military,Industrial Complex” 50 years ago, yet we still don’t deal with the “Military, Intelligence, Industrial Complex” as a special interest group, instead we act as if their only concern is the security of the country and ignore their self interest.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
It is essentially the same reason that the teacher unions are the biggest political contributors in the US. And does not ACORN work on a similar principle as EU “charities” which are substantially funded by the EU to lobby the EU?
If you create a big enough “honey pot” motivated by “doing good” then organised groups who receive from the honey pot are going to spend resources to secure their take of the honey pot: especially resources they got from the honey pot in the first place.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Re Rambuncle’s comment “So even though you knew nothing about the topic, you just felt you had to comment. You say Spencer Ackerman is not qualified to make a judgment, but what qualifications do you have to make a judgment?”
————-
Several decades working on military contracts and several SCI clearances. What I was referring to in my comment to Ajay is that , after an intensive review of the threats, future technology roadmaps, and alternatives, one might be able to make the case that there are better options than the Crusader. But I don’t go with Ackerman’s suggestion that he (a) has done that analysis or (b) is competent to do that analysis or (c) is smarter and more knowledgable than the Army officers who thought Crusader was a good idea.
The people who shoot off their mouth about “archaic” Cold War systems being “irrelevent” is an age of COIN are full of shit. Many of the wars we fought in Third World shitholes during the Reagan-BushI-Clinton-BushII Administrations made no sense from a national security viewpoint — they made sense only if you are a whore for Big Oil.
We are geared to fight and win wars in areas like Western Europe because Western Europe is among the few places worth fighting for. IF Russia or China gained control of the Eurasian continent, it would fuck the USA long term –because the resources of that continent are greater than what we can muster. Hence, our prime strategy must be to keep that continent divided.
Controlling the oil of the Middle East makes sense only if you want to grab our NATO allies by the short and curlies. Russia is not influenced –she has her own oil. It would make more sense for us to use the massive amounts of money we have poured into the Middle East into developing new energy supplies. It makes more sense to try to grab the lithium deposits of Bolivia or the uranium deposits of Australia than to continue Cheney’s game.
If you’re going to fight for something significant, then you’re going to need massive arty. It dominates the modern battlefield , in spite of the bullshit put out by the Air Force.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hey. So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
I am from Singapore and too poorly know English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Cheap flights from westcoast to hawaii and europe with last minute seats tickets.”
Thanks
. Auden.