Pentagon reform urged

Pentagon reform urged

Levin joined by McCain in effort to make military contracts more accountable, end $300B in overruns.

Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon, land of the $300 hammer, is where contract reform efforts go to die. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, has decided to try anyway, with some high-profile help from Sen. John McCain and, perhaps soon, from the White House.

Levin and McCain, the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, are pushing a plan to rein in the staggering cost overruns that threaten to cripple the Defense Department's budget.

The $300 billion in overruns for the Pentagon's 95 major acquisition programs would pay for all the tax cuts in Obama's just-signed economic stimulus package, with plenty to spare. It works out to about $1,700 per U.S. taxpayer.

Levin's committee has called experts from the Government Accountability Office and other agencies to testify before their committee today on the problem. But the real movement could come later: Levin said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has promised him that President Barack Obama will soon sign an executive order aimed at reforming contracting and call for adoption of the Levin-McCain bill.

"A lot will depend on the president and how much energy he puts into getting this passed," Levin said. A White House official could not confirm or deny Obama's plans.

The overruns are choking the Pentagon's ability to replace a vast array of aging weapons systems.

Reform "is more critical now than it's ever been," said Christopher Hellman, a budget analyst with the Center for Arms Control & Nonproliferation. "It's been mostly a good-government issue. But now the Pentagon is in such a financial bind that this is one of the things they have to do."

Asked why Michigan voters should care, Levin puts it simply: "Because they're taxpayers and they're patriots. They want their money spent wisely, and they want our troops to have the best weapons possible."

The key to the effort is putting teeth in a nearly 30-year-old law that requires the Pentagon to cancel programs with overruns of 25 percent unless the secretary of defense certifies that the program is vital to national security. .

Another big change: Reinforcing requirements for what's known as developmental testing -- basically, checking to see if a system works. Right now, many Pentagon programs skip that step and go straight to operational testing -- seeing if it can work in a combat environment. It's like testing a car on a racetrack before making sure the engine runs.