McCain Fesses Up

The Defense Department would like to whittle down the number of reports it has to provide Congress every year as part of a project to cut $100 billion from its overhead during the next five years, Ashton Carter, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Generating reports requires about 1,000 people he said in a response to a question from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. That's enough for an infantry battalion, by my reckoning. Carter added Defense is required to write about 1,000 reports a year because of requirements inserted in various bills, and another 1,000 various reports requested y individuals every year.

McCain agreed the requirement may be unnecessary considering what Congress does with them. "I'll let you in on a dirty little secret," McCain told Carter. "We don't even read them . . . [although] we might get briefed on them [by staff]."

In another moment of senatorial candor, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was about to ask Carter a question about the fiscal 2012 Defense budget, but then paused. Referring to the fiscal 2011 budget, Brown said, "We don't have a budget yet, maybe we should lead by example."

As the new guy on the Hill, Brown has evidently yet to learn that it seems to be the mission of Congress not to pass budgets on time.