Where Is All the Money Going?

I’d like to talk about what is constantly going on. The latest alliteration of this problem is with the NASA Space Launch System. It is going down the same path many other projects go down. It is like there is a script the companies have for contracts. First, they give a lower bid than what the project is going to cost. Secondly, they claim it will be finished faster than it really will be. As the project falls further and further behind the company claims it needs more money to complete the project and more time. This happens for as long as the project can be dragged out and the final step produces a product which is far more expensive than first cited, many years behind schedule and which may or may not have many problems.

The Space Launch System price just keeps going up. The company has managed to fall at least 4 years behind. The first launch was supposed to take place in 2017 but the latest estimate is 2021. So far, the project is about 2 billion dollars over budget and who knows what the final figure will be or when it will really launch? Now get this, the government is paying the contractor “award fees” for high performance. What a disgrace. Even the GAO (Government Accounting Office) is calling for NASA to renegotiate its strategy and get better outcomes from contractors. It isn’t only NASA which has these problems, they probably exist in every government agency which deals with contractors. We are being taken for a ride. The cost of the program is said to only be calculated through the first launch so there is no way to know the total cost.

I can’t help but think we would be so much better off letting private companies like SpaceX create a moon rocket with only minimal assistance from NASA instead of these paralyzing contracts with the old guard aerospace companies which are draining us dry. Even the capsule for the NASA rocket is experiencing cost overruns and yet that company is also receiving “award fees” for excellent service.

When we talk about the moon, we should be thinking a different way. We should be thinking about bringing minerals back to earth. They could pay for our entire space program if we find rare ones there. If we let private companies mine the moon it might give them the incentive to build moon rockets. There could even be factories built on the moon which could benefit from the low gravity which would make the manufacture of certain things cheaper. There are a lot of reasons a private company might want to develop moon rockets if the financial return was big enough.

So many contracts with the government just go the same way. Take the F-35 and F-22 planes for example. We are being told every new type of innovative aircraft will face delays and cost overruns. One might believe this if it wasn’t for the fact it seems far too many programs of all types face this problem. The price of the F-22 went up so much the number of planes produced had to be limited. The program’s final cost turned out to be 163 billion dollars in 2010 for only 195 planes. There is also a problem in the way cost per plane is figured. The figure cited for each plane is 150 million in 2009, yet that would only work out to 129 and a half billion dollars. If we figure the program cost and divide it by the number of planes, we seem to get over 343 million dollars a plane.  The F-35 went down the same path only it seems to also have far more problems. It was said this program was 163 billion over budget by 2014 and several years behind schedule.

There are programs run by the government to get rid of nuclear waste. They just keep going over budget and as one person put it there seems to be no end to the programs. It seems everything the government gets involved with has the same problems, and the new Homeland Security headquarters is no exception. It is the largest construction project in the history of the GSA (General Services Administration). In 2014 it was already 11 years behind schedule and 1.5 billion dollars over budget.

The federal government can no longer be counted upon to monitor its own contracts and hold contractor’s feet to the fire when they violate contracts. When companies are awarded for not performing, it is the height of hypocrisy. Stock holders of private companies would not stand for a company doing the same thing. Since the government is constantly doing things like this, it means if we could stop all this nonsense it would save tons of money. I have to wonder how much the waste in government accounts for. While I have been talking about cost overruns and such this is not the only area the government wastes money in. The government does things which seem to me to be a total waste of money in some cases. Take the case where our government lent a private corporation 85 million dollars to construct a hotel and apartment complex in Kabul, Afghanistan. The project was never finished, goodbye money. The government spent 55 billion dollars in 2015 to preserve old computer technology rather than trying to use new more efficient technology. The federal government buys so many vehicles each year the GAO stated there is no way of determining if they are all being used. This cost us 1.6 billion dollars.

In 2015 it was found by a watchdog review there were 6.5 million active social security numbers where the people would have to be at least 112 years old, so they were probably dead. This means all these numbers are subject to fraud and who knows how much is being stolen this way from the Social Security Administration?

I think it is painfully obvious the government is careless with our money and legislators have an agenda of their own which does not include us so they allow all sorts of cost overruns which have become routine.