How the Pentagon’s wasteful budget hurts the military

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Pentagon lost track of equipment worth more than a billion dollars, according to a now declassified Department of Defense audit obtained by Amnesty International last month. The F-35 program has already cost $100 billion to develop, and may not even be ready for combat according to an ex-director. The Justice Department has charged at least 20 U.S. Navy flag officers in the “Fat Leonard” scandal – one of the biggest corruption scandals in American military history. What’s going on? America operates the best and most well funded fighting force on the planet. It’s also the most expensive, and that much cash can breed corruption, waste, fraud and abuse. But this is more than just a financial problem. This week on War College, former Marine Corps captain Dan Grazier walks us through how bloated budgets and blank checks hurt military readiness. By Matthew Gault Produced by Bethel Habte

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Love this podcast.
0:02.0	Support this show through the A-Cast supporter feature.
0:05.0	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment.
0:09.0	Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:19.0	The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters news. President Eisenhower warned us against the military industrial complex.
0:24.3	Well, I prefer the military industrial
0:26.6	congressional complex.
0:27.9	I've literally been in a meeting on Capitol Hill
0:30.5	talking about the F-35, where I had a staffer say that look we can't oppose this
0:35.5	because it's worth a thousand jobs for us. On today's war college, a former Marine Captain tackles overspending in the U.S. military
0:51.7	and calls for an informed approach to deep cuts.
0:57.0	You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing
1:08.7	on the stories behind the front lines. Hello, welcome to war college.
1:17.0	Hello, welcome to war college.
1:22.0	I'm your host Matthew Galt. With me today's former
1:24.4	Marine Corps Captain Dan Grazier. Grazier did tours of duty in both Iraq and
1:28.5	Afghanistan before leaving the military and joining the project on government
1:32.1	oversight, an independent watchdog group, POGO fights to keep Washington open, honest, and accountable.
1:37.5	Dan, thank you so much for joining us.
1:39.5	Hey Matthew, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
1:42.0	Absolutely. So today we're going to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse in the American military
1:47.5	budget. I wanted to talk about it today because Amnesty International recently reported that the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matthew Gault, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Matthew Gault and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.