Budget Control Act | The Contracting Education Academy

December 10, 2013 By AMK

How Ash Carter oversold DOD’s savings record and his role

Outgoing Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s article “Managing Defense Spending Through ‘Better Buying Power,’ Not Sequestration,” convincingly demonstrates why and how the Department of Defense has and continues to waste so much of the taxpayer’s money.

Carter grossly exaggerates the reduction to the level of defense spending caused by the Budget Control Act. According to Carter, in September 2010, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched a defense-wide efficiency initiative to promote greater efficiency and productivity in defense spending called “Better Buying Power”. This initiative initially directed 23 principal actions in five major areas including eliminating cost growth and promoting competition in major weapons programs. The impetus for this initiative was Gates’ conclusion that the days of increasing defense budgets were coming to an end.

While the Pentagon, as any government agency, should always strive to be efficient, the real question was why Gates waited for four years after taking office, and for a time when defense budgets were not going to increase, before launching his initiative. Were he and his staff, including Carter, who was his undersecretary for acquisition, not trying to eliminate cost growth and promote competition while the budget was going up? Obviously not. As the Government Accountability Office has pointed out, the cost of the 95 major weapon systems developed by the Pentagon exceeded $400 billion in the first 10 years of this century.

Carter also provides some examples from each of the services to show how much money they have and will save by using these initiatives. Leaving aside the question of whether the savings will actually materialize. Carter fails to mention the cost overruns that continue to occur. For example, the first new Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier, which was christened this month, came in “only” 20 percent above projected cost.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/management/2013/11/how-ash-carter-oversold-dods-savings-record-and-his-role/74546

December 9, 2013 By AMK

Expect sequestration to hit much harder in 2014, report says

Less severe cuts, deferred costs and temporary solutions mitigated sequestration’s effect in its inaugural year, but will not help lessen the impact in 2014, according to a new report.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the tactics federal agencies used to reduce furloughs in fiscal 2013 are, in many cases, no longer available. In fact, they will largely accentuate the severity of the cuts this time around.

For example, Congress allowed the Federal Aviation Administration to move funds from an account meant to provide maintenance to airports nationwide to avoid furloughs of air traffic controllers that would have delayed flights. Similar budgetary “gimmicks” were employed at the Agriculture Department to stave off furloughs of meat inspectors and by the Justice Department, which has already announced plans of 10 furlough days for FBI agents in 2014.

Every major federal agency reduced its furlough projections in fiscal 2013, though that will likely be impossible this year, the report found.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/management/2013/11/expect-sequestration-hit-much-harder-2014-report-says/74366

November 25, 2013 By AMK

House panel targets DoD acquisition reform, but will that be enough?

The House Armed Services Committee is taking another crack at defense acquisition reform.

Committee chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) recently tasked Vice Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) to head up a new panel looking at ways to reform the defense acquisition process.

“While this Committee has led successful efforts to improve the way the Department acquires items and services, there are still significant challenges facing the defense acquisition system,” McKeon said in a release. “We cannot afford a costly and ineffective acquisition system, particularly when faced with devastating impacts of repeated budget cuts and sequestration.”

The announcement came as experts on defense acquisition gave the committee some guidance on how to proceed. One of the witnesses was Dov Zakheim, former undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He says a new approach to defense acquisition reform has the potential for new results and the old approach won’t work this time around either.

“The way that we’ve been trying to do it, which is essentially focusing on specific issues with legislation, addressing them or process improvements is just not the way to go,” Zakheim told In Depth with Francis Rose. “It clearly hasn’t worked.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/473/3499160/House-panel-targets-DoD-acquisition-reform-but-will-that-be-enough

October 31, 2013 By AMK

Report predicts effects of sequestration on DoD budgeting, procurement and operations

If sequestration, created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) remains in place over the next decade, the Department of Defense (DoD) budget may drop as much as $415 billion, according to a report issued by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).

The report — entitled “Chaos and Uncertainty: the Fiscal 2014 Defense Budget and Beyond” — estimates that the military’s authorized procurement level would fall to $62 billion on an annual basis.

The report’s author concludes: “Now that sequestration has gone into effect and the deepest part of the decline from FY 2012 to FY 2013 has already occurred, the BCA budget caps may be more of a ceiling than floor in the coming years.”

To download a full copy of the report, click here.

To view presentation slides about the report, click here.

October 28, 2013 By AMK

DoD gears up for Round 2 of sequestration

Opponents of last year’s across-the-board spending cuts are hoping — perhaps quixotically — that sequestration’s second verse won’t be the same as its first.

Now that a bipartisan deal has ended the government shutdown, the resulting budget conference committee is the new best hope for turning off the cuts that have hit the Pentagon and defense industry hard and threaten to get even worse.

But even though the latest chapter in Washington gridlock is over, very little has actually changed.

“It’s important to note that Congress did not remove the shadow of uncertainty that has been cast over this department and our government much of this year,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday during a press briefing at the Pentagon.

“The damaging cuts of sequestration remain the law of the land,” he said. “In the months ahead, Congress will have an opportunity to remove this shadow of uncertainty as they work to craft a balanced, long-term spending bill.”

Hagel urged lawmakers to give the Defense Department and its vast workforce stability and predictability after the ringer they’ve been through, including sequestration furloughs over the summer and then shutdown furloughs more recently.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/dod-gears-up-for-round-2-of-sequestration-98577.html

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