DV Journal

Pennsylvania Congresswoman Chrissy Houlihan recently sent voters an email describing the thrilling proposed spending of close to $900 billion dollars for the National Defense Authorization Act, FY 2025. Houlihan, a Democrat representing Chester and Berks counties, delightedly ran down the list of how our taxes would be apportioned, describing it as “the government’s budget and policy blueprint for the military — and much more!”

While the NDAA presumably goes toward buying warships, 2,000-pound bombs, F-35s and, well, “much more,” Houlahan wanted to emphasize how local businesses can make a killing by becoming a contractor for the Pentagon. Houlihan details the potential jackpot, explaining, “If you are a defense contractor, sub-contractor, or looking to become one in PA-06, you can submit proposals for the NDAA too.”

But she urges speed. “We are one of 535 offices making these requests…” After all, how long can a mere $883 billion last?

In truth, no one really knows how far that budget will go, mainly because no one knows where all that money goes. A lot of it simply disappears, like the change you lose in the cushions. But instead of dollars, it’s billions. To date, we are unable to account for nearly $4 trillion in assets.

The Pentagon undergoes an annual audit to ensure the trillions of asset dollars are under control. In fact, the military has undergone seven separate financial audits.

They have also failed seven audits in a row.

Houlihan and her peers in Congress are responsible for overseeing the government’s budget, although two-thirds of that budget is, in effect, out of their control. The bulk of our spending is on social programs like Medicare and Social Security and are controlled by automatic increases tied to inflation.

Also, the growing interest payments cannot be touched, leaving discretionary spending, mostly on the military. The new DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) program is supposed to reduce waste, but only Congress can enact changes in law affecting most spending. Unsurprisingly, Houlihan and others in Congress have done almost nothing to rein in out-of-control spending.

Which brings us back to the growing cost of the military. The number is likely to reach $1 trillion over the next few years, and the chances of the next fiscal audit being failed is probably 100 percent.

Constant audit failures, lack of spending transparency, and possible fraud and waste should raise serious concerns in Congress. Instead, we get an invitation by a representative to visit her office to learn about “Decoding the National Defense Authorization Act: Tips for a successful submission to grow your business,” an invitation to get in on the action.

Mandatory spending does not mean that saving is impossible. If these multiple failures teach us anything, it is that government programs are prone to waste, and the larger the program, the greater is the potential to waste money. Audits are valuable tools, but useless if no one acts in response. Congress feels good because it oversees an audit that it doesn’t act upon.

One solution may be using a Zero-Balance budgeting system. That requires an agency to ‘zero-out’ spending and justify the next year’s budget rather than receive automatic increases.

Alternately, we could take audits seriously and insist that failed audits are addressed and fixed before approving a budget. If the Pentagon can fail a fiscal audit seven times consecutively, what chance does DOGE have to rein in spending?

Congress needs to view government spending as a fiscally important duty entrusted to it by the voters who provided the funds, rather than an opportunity to invite constituents to rake in the money falling through the Pentagon’s couch cushions.

Oh, and you know what else costs too much? Those audits use 1,700 auditors, at an annual cost of $178 million dollars.

With contracts in the billions to trillions of dollars range, bidding at the Pentagon can be a tricky, albeit big business. The proposal process is complicated, and competition is thick. A mistake to avoid is importing materials from an adversary when making American military equipment. One American company did just that — importing a critical engine part for fighter jets from China — and the Pentagon isn’t happy.

Reuters reported on September 7 that the “Pentagon has stopped accepting new F-35 jets after it discovered a magnet used in the stealthy fighter’s engine was made with unauthorized material from China, a U.S. official said.”

The Pentagon investigation started in August and concluded that an alloy in the F-35 jet engine lubricant pump used unauthorized Chinese content. This part violates federal law, which prevents using metals or alloys from American adversaries China, Iran, North Korea or Russia for Pentagon acquisition programs.

The F-35 fighter jet has had many problems over the years. Dan Grazier wrote in The Hill in April 2021 that the F-35 program has “a projected cost over $1.7 trillion” and “exhibits everything from structural cracks to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Twenty years in development — and it still can’t shoot straight and is rarely ready to fly when it is needed.”

It was supposed to be a “low-cost plane intended to serve the needs of all military branches.” Only in Washington could a program costing more than $1 trillion be classified as “low cost.”

The design flaws are numerous in the program, and some of them were never intended to be corrected. Business Insider reported on March 13, 2020, “The beleaguered F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is still suffering from hundreds of unresolved design flaws, according to a new report from a nongovernmental watchdog, dozens of which the Defense Department has ‘no plan’ to ever correct.”

The Project on Government Oversight requested information about the program. It was provided a list of 833 design flaws, with more than half in dispute between the contractor and the government. More than 100 were designated to never be fixed by the contractor.

With the numerous problems slowing this expensive program, now the threat emerges of a Chinese part being used to manufacture the F-35s. There may be issues in replacing that part thanks to the need to find a new domestic supplier of a specialty product. This will cause even more slowdowns in a program that has promised so much and delivered so little.

It seems as obvious as saying water is wet, but U.S. military hardware should be made with American parts. There is a slew of reasons for this, not the least of which is ensuring foreign powers cannot tamper with our military equipment by putting in a defective part or one that could track a stealth aircraft.

This is a big problem because, as Bloomberg News reported on September 9, “every one of the more than 825 F-35 fighter jets delivered so far contain a component made with a Chinese alloy that’s prohibited by both U.S. law and Pentagon regulations, according to the program office that oversees the aircraft.

One would think somebody would have picked up on this before more than 800 aircraft were built and delivered to the military. But this is the federal government, so think again. The more we learn about the program, the more problems we discover.

The concerns are many. What if this part has been put into the program intentionally by the Chinese who want to sabotage the engines with a product designed to fail or for espionage? There’s certainly a motive. The Chinese military doesn’t want to face the F-35s in a potential conflict. That’s for certain.

If taxpayers pay top dollar for a military aircraft, they expect the best America offers. Not a clunker of an aircraft that has violated the law with a banned Chinese engine part.