Indefensible

Speaking as a federal employee* the stories of largesse among the higher ranks of our armed forces really rub me the wrong way.

On one hand we have the cohort represented by General Petraeus marching to cocktail parties with an entourage of 50, decked out in epaulets, medals, and merit badges, screwing their fawning biographers, and biding their time before their fat 50s-era pension matures so they can sell their insider connections to the highest bidder among a sea of mostly unaccountable defense contractors. Or this guy.

On the other hand, there’s the typical experience of a federal employee, represented by me. If I have a meeting downtown I need to fill out a travel form for the five-dollar subway ride a month in advance. If there's a conference, only one person from my office can go, and it can’t be somewhere nice, like Vegas or Key West, or they probably won’t approve it. We have an office fund for the water cooler. Someone fronts the money and we all pitch in 8 dollars a month so we can enjoy our Cup ‘O Noodles with something other than bathroom tap water.

This is not to belittle military service. It’s to say that we are all public servants and should be held to the same ethical standards. Speaking with people I know in the defense community, it’s shocking to hear about the routine abuses of public office by the upper echelons of the military communities. It's even built in to the rules. Many defense contracts work under a cost-plus methodology, where instead of receiving a fixed sum for their work they are paid an open-ended rate for the hours they bill, plus a guaranteed profit, regardless of whether they are massively over budget or generate inferior work. We don't even know about large chunks of that spending (and others) because it's classified. 

Members of Congress routinely inquire into the minutest details about my tiny agency’s half-million dollar grants, looking for any malfeasance they can tout as government waste. It is rare to hear about any elected official providing meaningful oversight to the multi-billion dollar defense contracts, even as defense spending has nearly doubled since 2001. They target us because we are part of the health care safety net. We provide services to poor, politically unimportant constituents. 

Federal spending requires oversight. I get that. My agency doesn’t give a dime to anyone without half a dozen levels of program and grant review, independent audits, and continuous performance assessments. We're scared to death of Congress, but if Congress finds something wrong with my program, we’ll fix it. Meanwhile, twenty percent of federal spending goes to the defense department. Who’s watching them?

*Unofficially, not on Uncle Sam’s time or equipment