Readers React: How to rein in defense spending: Change the way military contracts are awarded

To the editor: William D. Hartung does not address the heart of the Department of Defense’s cost control issues. (“How not to audit the Pentagon,” Opinion, April 10)

The standard contracting approach by the Pentagon is cost-plus contracting, which leads to the vast majority of cost overruns and excesses. Cost overruns in cost-plus contracting are paid for by the taxpayer, not the contractor. Cost-plus contracting leads to a lowball to win the contract and get the Pentagon “pregnant” in the first couple of years so that it is too late for the department to switch. Then it is off to the races without cost control.

The Pentagon should use fixed-price contracting, in which the contractor is responsible for paying for their cost overruns.

Paraphrasing Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, one spends other people’s money with much less diligence than one spends their own money.

Eddie Dawes, Hacienda Heights

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To the editor: Hartung correctly points out that all too often military spending is used primarily as a tool by politicians to ensure their reelection and is often only tangentially related to national defense. While the (often) absurd spending pointed out by the author is truly bipartisan, it is Republicans who are the champion spenders.

It’s an inconvenient fact that since 1960, the two presidents who presided over the largest increase percentage-wise in the federal debt were Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom oversaw huge increases in the defense budget. When a politician advocates higher military spending, grab your wallet — it’s less about national defense than winning reelection.

Stanley Gray, Dallas

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