How the Government Saves Money

C27J Spartan

Our government has a pretty strange idea of how to save money. We see examples of it every day and it often makes me want to ask Congress: “Who are you guys and what have you done with the guys we thought we were voting for?” 

Here is an example of what I mean: Our Pentagon is sending $50 million cargo planes straight from the assembly line to mothballs because sequestration has made them cutback and find ways to save money. It seems that there are other aircraft that can perform a similar enough roll that these puppies are not necessary. But in their governmental bureaucratic wisdom, they still haven’t stopped ordering the aircraft! 

A dozen nearly new C-27J Spartans have been shipped to an Air Force facility in Arizona dubbed “the boneyard,” and five more currently under construction are headed for the same fate. The Air Force has spent $567 million on 21 of the planes since 2007, according to purchasing officials. Of those, 16 have been delivered – with almost all sent directly to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson (where some 4,400 aircraft and 13 aerospace vehicles, with a total value of more than $35 billion, sit unused). 

The C-27J has the unique capability of taking off and landing on crude runways, Ethan Rosenkranz, national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told one newspaper. But with sequestration dictating Pentagon cuts, the planes were deemed a luxury it couldn't afford.

“When they start discarding these programs, it's wasteful,” he said. (no duh)

The planes are built under what was initially a $2 billion contract, though that was scaled back.

Not surprisingly, politics appear to have played a role in the planes continued manufacture. Ohio's senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, were both defenders of the C-27J when 800 jobs and a mission at Mansfield Air National Guard Base depended on it. Brown urged the military in a 2011 letter to purchase up to 42 of the aircraft, saying too few planes "will weaken our national and homeland defense." Congress pulled the plug on the broader expenditure but kept the contract in place for those 42 planes. 

Apparently canceling orders for planes already being built is not feasible -- even if they are not needed, according to Air Force spokesman Darryl Mayer. 

"They are too near completion for a termination to be cost effective and other government agencies have requested the aircraft," Mayer said in a statement. 

Excuse me??? If you don’t have the money to spend, and you’ve decided you don’t need them, why the hell are you continuing to spend $50 million (tax dollars) on each one and then just send them to mothballs? And if other government agencies have requested them –why aren't they taking them? 

The definition of Government Bureaucracy is: “Incompetence combined with stupidity and guided by political wheeling/dealing resulting in massive wasted tax dollars.”

Todays Reflection:

Give a jackass an education and you get a smartass

Live Long and Prosper...