Opinion

Trump: A New Sheriff Against Wasteful Spending

Joanne Butler Contributor
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President-elect Trump did a good thing when he got angry and talked to the CEO of Boeing over the high cost of building a new fleet of Air Force One planes.  While this was a good start, it was just the tiny tip of the federal fiscal iceberg.  If Trump really wants to roll up his sleeves and conquer federal waste, he should invite two men to Trump Tower:  former Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) and Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

When Dr. Coburn was in the Senate, he had an eye for wasteful defense spending.  In 2014, for example, he found the Pentagon had spent a billion dollars to destroy 16 billion dollars of ammunition.

The Defense Department is, in their own parlance, a target-rich environment.  In 2013, the military destroyed $7 billion in equipment during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, claiming it was too expensive to bring the equipment back to the States or to donate it to other countries.

In 2008, then-Senator Coburn criticized the Army for its decades-long sole source contract with Colt Defense for the production of the M4 Carbine!  Coburn described Colt as a “fat contractor … who has gotten very rich off our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

As Senator, Coburn published an annual Wastebook, listing all manner of stupid spending his staff had uncovered.  Senator Flake published a follow-up Wastebook last year.  One big-ticket item involved $5 billion spent on excess computer data centers.  These centers contain expensive equipment with high maintenance costs, such as air conditioning.  In 2010, the federal government had over 3,000 data centers; by 2015 the number had jumped to 11,700.

Senator Flake is concerned about the lack of oversight on research projects, and his Wastebook lists many bizarre examples, including studying the impact of microgravity on sheep.

And while the President-Elect has promised to restore America’s military might, he should know that earlier this year, the Defense Department’s Inspector General cited the Army for $2.8 trillion in cover-ups for accounting mistakes in just one quarter in 2015.  The total for 2015 was $6.5 trillion.  The Inspector General found the Army lacked receipts/invoices or simply fudged the numbers to account for those $6.5 trillion in expenses.

And that was just the Army – what about the Navy and Air Force?

The $6.5 trillion in Army funding was spent and is gone.  Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan says the Social Security retirement program is unsustainable for the future and Medicare costs too much.  Would an infusion of $6.5 trillion in 2015 have fixed the problem?

An unfortunate mindset of the federal government (including the Congress) is money is not fungible – what the Defense Department receives can’t be moved to another Department.  As a businessman, the President-Elect knows the truth: money is indeed fungible and transferable.

If one part of the government can afford to let $6.5 trillion vanish within a year, why can’t we afford to maintain Social Security and Medicare in its present state?

I realize how, on the campaign trail, the President-Elect and Senator Flake had their differences.  But as Trump’s meeting with Mitt Romney indicates, he is willing to bury the hatchet.

If the President-Elect truly wants America to get a better deal with its tax dollars, Senator Flake and Dr. Coburn have a roadmap to do just that.  A phone call from the President-Elect will bring them to Trump Tower – and signal to all those involved in wasting taxpayer dollars that a new sheriff is coming to Washington, D.C.