Tax Dollars Squandered By Air Force?

(CBS)  You've heard about soldiers in Iraq who've had to fight without the proper equipment.

It turns out while they're "doing without," the military has been ordering, and storing, billions of dollars in other equipment it doesn't need, CBS News investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports for Follow the Money.

A slick video produced by the military highlights all that extra property and a program that tries to find uses for it.

It shows desks, chairs, filing cabinets, boots, Kevlar helmets and binoculars - paid for with your tax dollars. The equipment often ends up being given away, sold for pennies on the dollar - or destroyed.

The military has so much "excess inventory," there are dozens of giant warehouses around the nation, like one Attkisson visited at Fort Meade, Md. And there's an entire agency, employing 1,400 people, set up to do nothing but manage it all.

Within the military, the Air Force is the biggest offender. That's according to government investigators with the GAO, who found the Air Force doesn't need half of the spare parts it has on hand.

But here's what's even worse: Half of what's on order isn't needed, either!

A big chunk is tagged for possible "disposal" even before it's delivered: $235 million dollars worth, according to new figures from the GAO.

"The idea that over $200 million in spare parts that has not yet come into the Air Force is already marked for disposal!" said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. "They're planning to get rid of it and it hasn't even come in!"

Sanders wants Congress to cut Air Force funding if it doesn't get a serious grip on its inventory problem.

For example, the Air Force already has hundreds of aircraft ducts they don't need (that's 214, at $6.9 million). But more are on order. It has thousands of unneeded aircraft blades, and thousands more on the way - 7,460 at $2 million, to be precise.

It costs up to $30 million dollars a year just to store the stuff they don't need.

Nobody at the Air Force would agree to an interview, but told us they're "taking steps" to fix the problems and to "serve the best interest of the American public."

"We have almost $19 billion in absolute waste in spare parts in the Air Force," Sanders said.

They are taxpayer dollars squandered in the wild blue yonder.

[neobrian-2009]

SOB2211 Learned to cut & paste !
Give him a star !He`s now the smartest boy in the Kings`trailer court.A hint for the new year,don`t run with scissors.
Merry Christmas !

[pensacola88]

This waste is partly because of an Air Force Regulation that declared when budgeted funds are not spent, they have to return the unspent funds, and future funding will be at a reduced level - most likely to the level actually spent in the previous year. No Air Force officer gets brownie points or promotions if they save operating expenses. They actually loose their political future if they over-spend and underspend. Most hoard funds and then spend like crazy every September. In the Air Force, the spending culture is also paralleled with the power culture. If you want promotions in the Air Force, you must spend the exact same dollar amount of your annual budget every year. One year, those worthless IBM punch cards were ordered by the millions, just because IBM had them in stock and the Air Force had extra money to spend. It took years to get those IBM cards out of circulation.

A change in the Air Force Regs would put an end to this silly nonsense that has been going on for years.

[gunownerdan]

Why shouldn''t the Air Force be part of the raping of America?
Everyone else is doing it!
The Military Industrial Complex is one hungry monster.

[homespunlady]

I remember an old B movie about military procurement where every crackpot lined up to SELL his latest overpriced War machine. I think it followed a story line about a pink submarine or something like that. Trying to remember the name but it was a pretty good satire about this. Oh well there has been several movies on this clear back to before WWII.

The only consolation is that a lot of that excess gets funneled to other governmental agencies and even schools, etc. through property disposal. There are occasional auctions for things like noncritical items - scrap metal, office furniture and leftover building materials. I once bought a really great set of 50''s kitchen cabinets that were great for me although "outdated" for military housing.
I just want to see the usable excess recycled or "passed down".
With the economy rapidly collapsing in on itself - see all the articles about the housing devaluation ripples affecting property taxes and LOCAL government revenues - I expect A LOT MORE of the SMART local governments will be scanning and ordering from those "excess lists".

At least maybe SOME of our tax dollars will return to the taxpayers that way.

[watcher269-2009]

See what our military is becoming! It is time to start taxing Religion or abolish the southern christian movements.

For US Army soldiers entering basic training at Fort Jackson Army base in Columbia, South Carolina, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior appears to be as much a part of the nine-week regimen as the vigorous physical and mental exercises the troops must endure.

That''s the message directed at Fort Jackson soldiers, some of whom appear in photographs in government issued fatigues, holding rifles in one hand, and Bibles in their other hand.

Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has been telling soldiers at Fort Jackson that "government authorities, police and the military = God''s Ministers,"

[neobrian-2009]

Their KING CloWn is About to lose his CroWn
Bushynomics-Rape the people,rid them of their money,..Tell them Lies,.." Corruption has Never been So Deeply rooted as it is now,..The Evil Roots of Resident Shrub have entwined Our Very existence as a free nation.With W`s help,corporate USA,is " The Epitome of True Evil ",...Greed,Corruption,Lies are the platform of the GOP sect.
Remember " Friends NEVER let friends vote republiCON"
This pit that Shrub has dug for us is Very deep,...Do Your part,..Do Everything Possible to rid the USA of this dreaded " Culture Club of Toe-Tapping Greedy Liars ",...It`s Our Future,..

[ov442]

{If a "investigative" news oganization, such as CBS claims to be, really wanted to demonstrate their scoop-worthiness, then let them find and write a story on the military spending tax-dollars on a worthwhile project. -Posted by Nancy_Naive }

Yeah, you sure are naive.
The american populace is set up to believe that the military has brains enough to put their budget into areas of pressing need and usefulness. The White house and pentagon team up to convince you of that.
Therefore the "Scoop" or news story would be any evidence of wrongdoin, fraud, kickback contracts, government waste, military waste, ineffective uses, or bad management of resources while our soldiers fight in a war they were sent to without adequate protection, needed modifications and armoring of vehicles to help safety, and vehicles known to be safer such as the one the Military declined to order until Joe Biden of congress got behind it and ordered them to help save lives of our soldiers.

[sbb2211]

"SOB2211 Who Are U Tryin to Fool ?
We`re Not as Stupid As YOU & Poop4brains,.Get a Life ! Not one person thinks you have any sense at all( except maybe your closet pal,Poop-packer),..Go back to your trailer court and pay the boy at the cyber-cafe.

Posted by neobrian at 10:42 PM : Dec 21, 2007"

Ooh! You are scaring me.

You want some references?

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/wheeler_lipstick.htm
http://independent.org/publications/policy_reports/detail.asp?type=full&id=21
http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0707/Earmarks_in_the_House_defense_bill.html
http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/node/4172
http://mpinkeyes.wordpress.com/2007/08/05/nancy-pelosi-adds-15-earmarks-to-defense-spending-bill/

The language is kind of long in these, so you may want to have your mommy read it to you as a bedtime story.

Merry Christmas!

[rowdytexan2]

...and let''s not forget the weaponery that gets bought, loaded up, and lobbed off into the ocean in practice...

As a young Navy red-shirt my son came home from his first stint on the USS Eisenhower. In one of our talks, he said, I know I''m no expert, but it really is puzzling to me that when we''re out there practicing maneuvers and our planes would lob stuff out there that never blew up. I kept asking, wasn''t that suppose to blow something up? Three out of six times, the missile never fired. They told me those things cost a couple of million each, and they don''t work? What''s with that?

It''s not just a matter of quantity and gross miss spending, but it''s also a matter of does this *** work? Does anybody keep a tally on things that turn out to be duds? Or do they just mark it off as ''pilot error''?

[missingamerica]

The military has the exact same problem that Congress has.

If you have the pull to throw sufficient tax dollars at a corporation, you can either work or lobby for that corporation for a nice chunk of change when you leave the military or Congress, as the case may be.

Until the revolving doors are jammed this sort of waste - if not fraud - is practically inevitable.