GAO Blasts Weapons Budget
Cost Overruns Hit $295 Billion

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon’s biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

All this while veterans go without. That is a national disgrace- and the numbers referenced above? They don’t include our illegal optional wars of choice that we’re currently mired in. To see how that money might have been better spent, take a gander:

Taxpayers in Decatur, Georgia have paid $37.3 million for the Iraq War thus far. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

9,494 People with Health Care OR
29,112 Homes with Renewable Electricity OR
949 Public Safety Officers OR
614 Music and Arts Teachers OR
7,518 Scholarships for University Students OR
3 New Elementary Schools OR
309 Affordable Housing Units OR
21,119 Children with Health Care OR
5,264 Head Start Places for Children OR
638 Elementary School Teachers OR
487 Port Container Inspectors

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 am and is filed under Outrages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.