From the same RINO who brought you McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, and even Feingold-McCain.
Posted on 02/24/2009 3:17:29 PM PST by rabscuttle385
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department would be forced to change its acquisition process under legislation introduced on Tuesday by top senators determined to crack down on the runaway costs and costly schedule delays dogging many Pentagon weapons programs.
Senators Carl Levin, the Democrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, and John McCain, a former presidential candidate and the top Republican on the committee, said the bill aimed to achieve more reasonable cost and schedule estimates before programs started.
It also would ensure technologies were more developed before production began and would crack down on the frequent changes to programs blamed for many cost increases.
The bill would also tighten the existing Nunn-McCurdy law, which requires termination of major weapons programs if they breach certain cost thresholds, but is seldom implemented. The Senate plan would require more documentation and independent cost estimates before any future Nunn-McCurdy law waivers are granted for national security reasons.
The Pentagon's "95 largest acquisition programs are an average of two years behind schedule and have exceeded their original budgets by a combined total of almost $300 billion," Levin said in a statement. "We simply cannot afford this kind of continued waste and inefficiency."
Levin said the key lies in better early planning, systems engineering, cost-estimating, and early developmental testing.
McCain said the bill would result in important changes, but the Pentagon needed to tackle its own systemic problems.
"The primary responsibility to reform the process falls on the Department of Defense. No amount of legislation can substitute for a true commitment to acquisition reform within the Pentagon," McCain said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
From the same RINO who brought you McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, and even Feingold-McCain.
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Well, this will be a disaster, how bad is anyone’s guess.
Oh good. At first I thought we were going to add legislation that would only kill our civilian manufacturing industry. Glad to see Congress being efficient and moving on to military manufacturing, too.
/s
This law (?) is basically smoke and mirrors. There are at least 12.000 separate pieces of legislation (plus the plethora of regulations which result from them) that a contracting office has to jump through before Uncle can procure anything. This is in addition to getting the funds authorized before the procurement process can start. Then of course the procurement has to be competed so the “lowest” bidder can be awarded the contract. If you haven’t fallen asleep yet, the item can be procured.
What is needed, is a fundamental change in how Uncle procures items to strip away the bureaucratic red tape. Congress will never do this. (I know never is a long time.)IMHO
This is the man behind the hold on the new AF Tanker. What is he going to say if there is a major catastrophe? We know there were problems with the contract but he tried to tell the AF the type of tanker that was needed which would have taken several to fuel a B-52. Bush punted to the new Administration but Gates is a holdover and has done zero, zip, nada as far as the folks at Tinker know.
McCain’s deal to lease a commercial plane for ten years as a tanker and then the AF had to reconfigure it back to a passenger plane was stupid and would have cost mega bucks. It is not like the AF flies planes for ten years and then junks them.
Perfect picture!
Deranged? You know full well what happens every time McCain goes "bipartisan" on conservatives.
They took the money, threw it at ACORN, the UAW, too many banks to name, bad mortgages (that the people signed up for), whatever else is buried in porkulus and beyond. They want to replenish part of it with DOD funds. There is a large group in power that truly hates this country and it’s citizens.
I also see a lot of duplication of effort between divisions in the same company, and little effort to cooperate between those divisions...internal turf wars.
I am fairly dead set against waste in bureaucracy. Streamlining is a fundamentally sound concept and no one can argue with that IMO. Raising and creating the swarm of new entitlements, not streamlining them, while simultaneously capping the DOD from ‘above’ is disturbing. There are very few things that I can deal with over expenditures on, defense is one of them. The feds are mandated to protect this country and it’s citizens. They are not mandated in any way shape or form to meddle in the examples that I gave above. I agree with efficiency, but the context is impossible for me to ignore.
He gets a donation from someone still hoping for a $50 p.hour lettuce picking job?
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