Providing for Consideration of H.R. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, a strong military is certainly essential at a time when we face so many threats, from Russia's war crimes in Ukraine to threats from the People's Republic of China and North Korea to constant cyberattacks.

Paying for this security is very costly. It accounts for almost one- half of every dollar discretionarywise that we approve each year in the Congress. Of those dollars, almost one-half of the defense dollars goes to defense contractors--billions and billions of dollars.

While designed to ensure that we get more national security, this national defense authorization should also be doing more to provide taxpayer security--security from being ripped off by price gouging and by war profiteering.

As currently written, this bill provides insufficient protection for taxpayers regarding the private defense industry, which can too often extract monopoly prices and demand basically a blank check for weapons and military supplies that are essential to our servicemembers.

An industry that is basically self-policing itself without much competition and without much of a watchdog inevitably leads to overcharging. Since the 1990s, there has been massive consolidation of defense contractors, and at the same time, the Pentagon has cut tens of thousands of contract negotiators and watchdogs, leading to less oversight, less transparency, and too little accountability.

Overpricing for our military can impact the readiness of our Armed Forces, the well-being of our servicemen and -women, and certainly the resources of American taxpayers.

Let me give you just a couple of examples, Mr. Speaker. A woodruff key, which is a one-half inch semicircular disk that is used to connect machine parts to rotating shafts, is available at Walmart or you can go online to Amazon and buy one for about 10 cents a key. The Department of Defense recently bought some of these for $300 per key.

The Pentagon paid over $10,000 for an oil switch when a commercial equivalent was available for about $300. It has spent over $32,000 for an oil pump kit when one was commercially available for about $3,600.

These prices just keep soaring. Decades ago, the original price of a Stinger missile was $25,000. Now it is up to over $400,000.

I have submitted two modest amendments to try to rein in some of the waste and abuse and to, quite literally, provide our military more bang for the buck. Both of these have been endorsed by the Project On Government Oversight, by the R Street Institute, and by Taxpayers for Common Sense.

One would simply establish a panel to review major contracts to determine whether fair and reasonable prices were paid and make recommendations to better ensure that the Pentagon gets the best possible deal. The second would strengthen transparency and provide government contracting officers access to sales data that they need to make informed, reasonable decisions in negotiating fair prices.

Both result from the excellent report that ``60 Minutes'' did in May that highlighted price gouging by some of the giant corporations that just happen to be enjoying record profits.

For Republicans who are always telling us that we need to fight waste, fraud, and abuse, now is the time to do something about it in the biggest appropriations bill and authorization that we have before this Congress. Because they have thus far refused to approve these taxpayer protection amendments, I think that we are not getting at the waste in Pentagon procurement.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this rule and remain hopeful that eventually these amendments to do something to protect taxpayers along with our military readiness will be approved.

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